Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal in Cincinnati, October 12, 2020.
Progressives have insisted that the road to economic recovery and an economy that works for everyone goes through preventing lobbyists, corporate leaders, and Wall Street from dominating a Biden administration. One implicit corollary to this is that the positive policy results and tangible benefits for the working class would reap political benefits in the future.
A new set of polling indicates that it’s also good politics right now.
The Data for Progress survey, commissioned by Demand Progress, a group that has focused on the importance of administration personnel, finds overwhelming support for the proposition that lobbyists, Wall Street executives, high-tech monopolists, oil barons, and private military contractors have too much power over the government. And a plurality of respondents state that, if Vice President Biden were to ban these lobbyists and executives from participating in his administration, they would be more likely to vote for him in November.
Biden’s transition team ethics pledge fell well short of this goal. While it does bar past or current leaders of private prison companies and fossil fuel companies from serving in the transition, other executives can serve. Plus, lobbyists who were registered over the past 12 months could also participate if they receive approval from the transition’s general counsel. (The general counsel, Jessica Hertz, was herself a shadow lobbyist for Facebook.)
The polling demonstrates that moving instead to prevent lobbyists and executives from the defense, finance, and tech sectors would hearten the Democratic base, persuade independents and even some Republicans, and generally put Biden in a better position from both a political and policy standpoint.
The survey answers on the power of various corporate elites are pronounced. Lobbyists (by a margin of 56 percent to 8 percent), as well as executives of Wall Street firms (56-6), tech companies (54-7), oil and gas interests (53-9), and military contractors (44-12), are seen as having too much influence with the government. These numbers were generally similar across all party identifications. While Republicans had slightly less anger over Wall Street, oil and gas, and defense, on lobbyists and tech executives, the fears of too much power were identical regardless of party.
The poll then asked how certain Biden announcements would affect their vote. Asked what the impact would be of Biden stating that Wall Street firms would not oversee financial policy, 39 percent said it would make them more likely to vote for him, with 21 percent saying less likely. The numbers were similar for tech executives and lobbyists overseeing tech policy (38-22), oil and gas industry types overseeing environmental policy (43-20), and military contractors overseeing defense policy (38-22).
“These results prove what anybody outside the Beltway should recognize: Rule by corporatist elites is very unpopular,” David Segal of Demand Progress told the Prospect.
The numbers are nearly as decisive for independents as they are for Democrats: 41 percent of independents would be more likely to vote for Biden if he banned Wall Street from running financial policy; on tech (39 percent), oil and gas (47 percent), and defense contractors (41 percent), the numbers are similarly high. Moreover, Republican opinion averages out generally neutral on these questions; 31-31 on Wall Street, 29-32 on tech, 30-33 on fossil fuels, 33-31 on military contractors. “Announcing a ban on these executives and lobbyists would rally the base, persuade independents, and create no backlash among Republicans,” Segal concluded.
The near-term benefits of a lobbyist- and corporate executive–free administration would pay dividends beyond this election cycle, Segal added. His premise is that only a policy agenda shorn of corporatism will generate the goodwill necessary to avoid the kind of reversal of fortune that the Obama administration experienced in the 2010 midterms, when policies that did not alleviate enough immediate suffering from the Great Recession led to Republican gains in the Senate, alongside a sweep of the House and many state legislatures and governorships.
“The way a potential Biden administration could keep the base united after the election,” Segal said, “is to adopt a program that shuns corporatists and does right by everyday people in the face of COVID-19 and the attendant economic collapse—and fixes myriad structural inequities that plagued the economy and society even prior to the pandemic.”
Executives and lobbyists from these sectors have given a lot of money to Biden and expect a say in governance. But if Biden and his party want to maintain power, this polling suggests they should happily take the money, and then slam the revolving door shut.
The poll of 1,162 likely voters was conducted in late September and has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.
House Democrats, led by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), encouraged colleagues last month to sign on to a declaration of support for a lobbyist ban for all executive branch positions. Anti-corruption policies were a political winner in 2018, and this new polling suggests they would benefit Biden as well, along with the country.
