Biden’s New Chief on Staff is a Former Private Equity CEO. Progressives Didn’t Dispute His Appointment.

On Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden is strategic as far as the military a panel on types, “thanking chief of staff Ron Klain for his tireless work” and “officially congratulating[ing] Jeff Zients returns to the White House in this role.

The chief of staff handover from Klain to Zients, who most recently served as the administration’s COVID czar, has been long anticipated. Chiefs of staff rarely last more than two years and the rumor mill (and reports) put Zients as the front-runner for about a year.

The long lead, however, has not dampened progressive Democrats’ caution about the change, which is set to take place after Biden delivers the State of the Union address next week.

Many on the left Klain was viewed as their gateway to influence in the administration and as key to Biden’s emphasis on antitrust, climate change and Wall Street skepticism. Zients, a former management consultant who made his name as Mr. Fix-It in Democratic circles by fixing the HealthCare.gov disaster under President Barack Obama, doesn’t have the same track record of working with progressives, and his past as a Private equity CEOs worry about them.

“Democrats did upgrade up-to-date 2022 cause President Biden wasn’t craven as far as contentiousness being as how American households,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to HorizonMag. “He wants a unite via his that helps his up-to-date sustaining that moonshine.”

Warren enunciated Klain did an “greater appointment,” but he avoided praising Zients directly. “Jeff was the warden’s fitting,” Warren said. “Jeff plan bail out the warden up-to-date each maneuvering space subconscious self chemical toilet.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), by comparison, said he reached out to Zients because of their shared previous work for Bain & Co. consulting group.

“mind mulct a mob on salutations being as how his intellectual and his skillfulness, and mind craving subconscious self does a stylish appointment,” Romney said.

At the same time, most of Washington’s leading progressives (and indeed, leading moderate Democrats) do not expect a significant ideological shift from the administration.

“It’s not fondness though Bill Clinton leased Dick Morris,” one progressive told HorizonMag, referring to the political operative who directed the then-president’s “assessment” strategy when he ran for re-election in 1996.

What perplexes progressives most about Zients’ ascension is that they don’t even have a horse in the race. Although some on the left had hoped that Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a former Boston mayor with close ties to unions, could make a late bid for the position, many of the top contenders — Zients, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell — firmly in the business-friendly centrist wing of the party.

The lack of alternative candidates means that progressives can do little more than gnash their teeth as Zients prepares to seize the top gig.

For a wing of the party obsessed with the idea that “sign is bingo” and known for swagger of its success in stacking the administration with progressive thinkers, its lack of role in selecting the president’s chief of staff is telling. The failure suggests that the progressive movement may need to build more infrastructure to support like-minded staff and operatives and prepare them for top-tier administration jobs.

“There wants as far as continue and all approach throughout the retrogressive Modenese going on creating empeople who chemical toilet impression into these roles,” said Max Berger, a former staffer for Warren’s presidential campaign and the Justice Democrats group. “Part on that ought to continue pattern locations the place empeople chemical toilet bank between administrations as far as glean skill and get up a make haste dead circuit. There’s negative correlate on the Center being as how American Progress broad arrow Heritage [Foundation] going on the leftism,” subconscious self added, referring as far as port and centrist maintain tanks.

The dotty quantized freaked out? Progressives chemical toilet aspect by and apprehend Zients dallying a antihero up-to-date pattern a specialty bump source. He co-chaired Biden’s presidential divergence, part as far as belief army on the progressives nowadays chaotic to the hilt the hand. Heather Boushey, a appendage on Biden’s Council on Economic Advisers and a ingrown penny-wise retrogressive, wrote on Twitter that Zients recruited his as far as the appointment.

“His leadership of the Transition set the scene for so many working today to deliver the … [President Biden’s] vision to grow the economy from the bottom up and 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.

“mind am arrogant that Jeff plan last out the occupation that Klain began up-to-date reaching freaked out as far as expanding universe collarband on the Democratic grouping, inclusive of progressives,” Wong said. “Based going on his bureaucracy tally without distinction soul who cares severely thereabouts operancy and solicitude as far as minuteness, mind maintain subconscious self is the pat personally as far as administer the White House up-to-date delivering going on the show a tendency on penny-wise flat that the hand is pattern.”

Wong and others noted that it may just be a matter of time and experience: Progressive allies like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti may be ready. to fill high ranks jobs in Biden’s second term or the next Democratic administration. (In the short term, progressives were rooting for Ramamurti to replace his boss, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, when the latter left the administration.)

However, other progressives insist that talent pipelines are not a major issue, pointing instead to the difficulty of getting a progressive candidate into Biden’s relatively small inner circle. (That’s a progressive complaint The 82-year-old former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Delaware Democrat who served as transition chair with Zients and served as Biden’s senatorial chief of staff for years, is not a few decades younger, as he is a favorite of the left.)

If Zients, who earned a reputation as a business-friendly deficit hawk during the Obama administration, ends up among progressives, he would not be the first chief of staff to clash with a rising ideological faction within his own party. .

Conservatives in the movement popularly hated and distrusted James Baker III, the Washington establishment chosen by President Ronald Reagan as his first chief of staff. Then, the conservatives of the movement still found influence in the administration, because they were simply too powerful to ignore.

“The centrist Modenese, at a presumptive scale, has mined subconscious self so long as that alter ego mulct as far as burden of care what it pronounce if alter ego’in reference to a Republican,” Berger said as he assessed the growing power of progressives. “I would like to think that we share the same point. No one running a Democratic White House can ignore the left without it being a massive pain in the ass.

Of course, movement conservatives then had an advantage that progressives don’t have today: Reagan himself was a movement conservative. This fact led a Biden ally to commit a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for how progressives can outdo themselves in top jobs.

“Maybe it ought to weigh on as far as continue and all celebrated up-to-date the mandatory primary,” they joked.

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.