Wednesday evening, President Joe Biden is scheduled to host a soiree of sorts, “thanking chief of staff Ron Klain for his tireless work” and “official welcome.[ing] Jeff Zients returns to the White House in this role.
The transfer of chief of staff from Klain to Zients, who most recently became the administration’s COVID czar, has been long anticipated. The chief of staff has rarely been around for more than two years and the rumor mill (and reports) have placed Zients as the front-runner for nearly a year.
The longtime leader, however, has yet to help progressive Democrats on the change, which will take place after Biden delivers his State of the Union address next week.
Many on the left see Klain as a gateway to influence in the administration and as key to Biden’s emphasis on antitrust, climate change and skepticism towards Wall Street. Zients, a former management consultant named Mr. Private equity CEOs are worried.
“Democrats are better off in 2022 because President Biden is not afraid to fight for the American family,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told HuffPost. “He needs a team that supports him to keep going.”
Warren said Klain did a “pretty good job,” but he didn’t immediately praise Zients. “Jeff is the president’s choice,” Warren said. “Jeff will help the president in any way he can.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), by comparison, said he was tied to Zients through the same time they worked for the consulting group Bain & Co.
“I respect his thinking and his capacity, and I hope he will do a good job,” Romney said.
At the same time, most Washington progressives (and frankly, leading moderate Democrats) do not expect a significant ideological shift from the administration.
“This is not like when Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris,” one progressive told HuffPost, referring to the political operatives who aimed for the president’s “triangulation” strategy when he ran for re-election in 1996.
What bothers progressives most about Zients’ rise is that he doesn’t have a horse in the race. Although some on the left are hoping Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a former Boston mayor with close ties to unions, can make the final bid for the position, many of the main contenders — Zients, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell – strongly belongs to the business-friendly centrist wing of the party.
The lack of alternative candidates means progressives can do little more than gnash their teeth as Zients prepares to take the top gig.
For the wing of the party is obsessed with the idea that “personnel is privacy” and is known to boast of success in stacking the administration with progressive thinkers, the lack of role in choosing the chief of staff of the president said. That failed indicates that the progressive movement may need to build more infrastructure to support the same staff and operations and prepare for top-level administrative work.
“There needs to be more focus in the progressive movement on developing people who can fill that role,” said Max Berger, a former staffer for Warren’s presidential campaign and the Justice Democrats group. “The department needs to develop a place where people can work across administrations to gain experience and develop career paths. There is nothing like the Center for Progress or American Heritage [Foundation] on the left,” he added, referring to liberal and conservative think tanks.
That’s weird? Progressives can look back and find Zients playing a role in building a major talent pipeline. He served as Biden’s presidential transition chair, helping to create many progressives now scattered throughout the administration. Heather Boushey, a member of Biden’s Economic Advisory Council and a dyed-in-the-wool economic progressive, wrote on Twitter it was Zients who recruited him for the job.
“Leadership in Transition sets the scene for many who are now working for… [President Biden’s] vision to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out,” Boushey tweeted on Friday.
Roosevelt Institute CEO Felicia Wong, who served on the advisory board for the transition, said it was clear then that Zients valued input from across the party’s ideological spectrum.
“I am confident that Jeff will continue the practice that Klain started to reach all parts of the Democratic coalition, including progressives,” Wong said. “Based on his track record as someone who cares deeply about execution and detail, I think he is the right person to lead the White House to deliver on the economic transformation promises that the administration has made.”
Wong and others note that it’s only a matter of time and experience: Progressive allies like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo and National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti could be poised to fill the top ranks. job in a second Biden term or the next Democratic administration. (In the short term, progressives are rooting for Ramamurti to replace his boss, Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, when the latter left the administration.)
Still, other progressives insist the talent pipeline isn’t the main issue, but points to the difficulty of getting progressive candidates into Biden’s relatively small inner circle. (A progressive lamented Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, 82, a Delaware Democrat who served as transition chairman with Zients and served as Sen. Biden’s chief of staff for several years, not a few decades younger, because he is a favorite of the left.)
If Zients, who earned a reputation as a business-friendly deficit hawk during the Obama administration, were to meet with progressives, he would not be the first chief of staff to do battle with rising ideological factions within his own party.
Conservative movement famously hated and mistrusted James Baker III, Washington establishment hand President Ronald Reagan was chosen as the first chief of staff. Then, the conservative movement still finds influence in the administration, because they are too powerful to ignore.
“The conservative movement, at a certain point, makes you care about what you have to say if you’re a Republican,” Berger said as he assessed his growing strength. “I’d like to think we’ve reached the same point. No one running a Democratic White House can ignore the left without being a huge pain in the ass.
Of course, movement conservatives then had an advantage that progressives don’t have now: Reagan himself was a movement conservative. This fact caused Biden’s allies to create tongue-in-cheek advice for how progressives can get more of the top jobs.
“Maybe he should try to be more successful in the elections,” he joked.
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.