What is “having a seat at the table” worth really?
The task force is just a tool to get votes. It’s a performative show of unity that will mostly decide what Biden talks about on the campaign trail. There’s no reason to believe it will have any impact on policy once he gets elected. It ultimately comes down to incentives. Depending on where the public is at, politicians will campaign from the left and then govern from the center. That’s exactly what Obama did. That’s precisely what Biden has said he will do in the past few years and what he has done for his entire career, i.e. pitch himself as a bipartisan consensus builder who can “reach across the aisle” and “get things done.”
In the end, it doesn’t matter who has Biden’s ear during the campaign. They will obviously be less influential than the people who are paying for his campaign, i.e. Bain Capital, Paloma Partners, Renaissance Tech and all the other Wall Street firms that are bankrolling him with the expectation of a return on investment. This is a frog and the scorpion situation. We know who the “Senator from MBNA” is and what he’s about. Yet, here we are ready to carry him across the river.
