How Biden’s Coalition Custodians Built an Anti-Tech Administration
Joe Biden’s presidency produced a paradox. A lifelong centrist – surrounded by veteran Democratic operatives shaped by the party’s pro-growth, pro-innovation era – ended up presiding over an anti-tech administration that rejected traditional economic assumptions in favor of post-neoliberalism.
This was not an accident. It was the result of several major factors: a left-driven strategy to interpret the 2016 results, a governing strategy rooted in coalition management, and a staffing process in which progressives were organized while moderates were not.
As I’ve addressed in previous posts, the intellectual backdrop was the Democratic Party’s response to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. Much of the party converged on a “blame tech” narrative, arguing that Facebook and other platforms helped deliver the presidency to Donald Trump. This explanation shifted blame for Clinton’s loss to external factors and redirected internal frustration toward a powerful, unpopular villain.
In the final months of Biden’s 2020 campaign and during his transition into the presidency, these factors guided Biden’s senior advisors as they charted the direction of the Biden Administration’s approach to tech.
By the time Biden entered office, skepticism toward tech was no longer a factional position within the party; Biden’s advisors adopted that skepticism as the Administration’s default.
Former Biden official Stef Feldman observed that Biden’s senior staff optimized for Democratic “coalition management” - and didn’t like saying no to “The Groups,” noisy Members of Congress, or Biden’s own activist staff:
The Biden inner circle was, with two exceptions, made up of people who did not love tough conversations or having to say no to members of the Cabinet or other senior White House staff. I know they sometimes approved ideas because they did not want a confrontation.
The key question is why these advisors - Biden’s “Coalition Custodians” - recalibrated from tech optimism toward placating an increasingly activist base, even when that shift diverged sharply from Biden and the advisors’ own records.
I see three key reasons why.
Throwing the Left a Bone
First, many in Biden’s senior advisory circle saw opportunity in this shift. Embracing an anti-tech, anti-monopoly posture offered a way to manage internal party tensions without threatening Biden’s core priorities.
After a contentious primary, Biden needed Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporters on board. Sanders and Warren cared a lot about agencies like the FTC, SEC, and CFPB - agencies which Biden personally didn’t care much about and wasn’t likely to spend his time or political capital. Supporting Warren and Sanders’ personnel and policies gave them and their progressive allies a win without forcing Biden to compromise on foreign policy, institutional stability, or executive authority.
Cracking down on Silicon Valley became a symbolic offering. It signaled that the administration was listening to the left, while costing relatively little in areas Biden personally cared about most.
This dynamic played out quickly. Biden’s early rhetoric shifted toward trust-busting themes, culminating in his declaration that “capitalism without competition is exploitation.” By elevating outspoken tech critics and adopting Warren-Sanders language around corporate power, Biden insulated himself from an early revolt on the left. With a 50-50 partisan split in the Senate and Republicans unlikely to support anything substantive in his agenda, he could not afford factional infighting if he wanted to move forward with any partisan legislation (or appointments).
As Feldman later explained, many senior aides were less interested in adjudicating ideological disputes than in avoiding them. Tech regulation became a tool of coalition convenience, designed to keep the loudest factions happy with Biden while preserving room to maneuver elsewhere.
Biden’s Coalition Custodians Prog-Washing Their Records
For some Democrats, the turn against Big Tech reflected genuine belief. For others, it reflected adaptation.
A cohort of ex-Obama and Clinton officials once identified with market-friendly economic growth rebranded themselves as “reformed” policy leaders fluent in the new progressive economic critique of the party. This was not a wholesale ideological conversion so much as progressive-washing: selectively emphasizing new rhetoric while minimizing past alliances with industry.
The release of the American Economic Liberties Project’s The Courage to Learn report in January 2021 formalized this shift. The report sharply criticized the Obama-Biden years for tolerating consolidation and failing to enforce antitrust laws, urging the new administration to break decisively with neoliberal orthodoxy. Its message was not subtle. The old approach had failed, and courage now meant reversing course.
For Biden’s senior aides, many of whom had helped shape the Obama economic approach, the report gave them cover: changing their views was “courageous.” Aligning with its conclusions allowed them to adapt to the party’s new economic framework without dwelling on or defending their own responsibility for the past.
Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s trajectory captures the pattern. Once a central figure in the Clinton wing of the party, Sullivan publicly reassessed Democratic economic thinking after 2016 - even coauthoring a piece with the leader of the Hewlett Foundation’s anti-neoliberalism project. Though he reportedly considered a role at Google, Sullivan instead repositioned himself as a critic of neoliberalism, urging Democrats to embrace the party’s leftward shift.
This does not mean these figures were necessarily insincere, but incentives mattered. As activist pressure intensified and progressive norms became dominant within elite Democratic spaces, adopting an anti-tech stance became the path of least resistance.
Warren’s Persistence
If Biden’s Coalition Custodians were adapting on the fly, Elizabeth Warren and her allies were already prepared.
From the earliest days of the transition, the progressive ecosystem treated staffing as the central battlefield. Warren’s long-standing belief that “personnel is policy” translated into action. More than 40 progressive organizations delivered a detailed list of roughly 400 recommended appointees to the Biden transition, targeting agencies where regulatory power mattered most.
The logic was straightforward. Even without sweeping legislation, an administration staffed with committed progressives could reshape antitrust, consumer protection, and tech regulation through executive action.
Moderates offered no comparable counterweight. As Feldman noted:
Left-leaning advocacy organizations had better structures set up to recommend candidates for political appointments…Powerful, left-leaning Members of Congress – including but not limited to Warren and Sanders – effectively advocated for their preferred candidates.
There was no coordinated effort to advance centrist candidates, no unified response to progressive pressure, and little public advocacy for pro-growth expertise. Many assumed Biden’s instincts would naturally favor familiar pro-growth figures. But, at least for key regulatory posts, they were wrong.
As a result, Warren-aligned candidates filled key roles, from the FTC to the Justice Department and CFPB. Cabinet secretaries found their staff recommendations overridden in favor of progressive favorites in order to balance the hiring from Biden’s rivals during the primary campaign, which was a goal given to the transition team managers.
Warren’s anti-tech agenda prevailed within the Biden Administration not because it commanded majority support from the rank and file of the party – but because Warren and her allies were organized, persistent, and aligned with the incentives of Biden’s inner circle.
Conclusion
What began as a tactical effort to “throw the left a bone” became a defining feature of Biden’s administration. Tech policy, antitrust, and corporate regulation moved sharply left, not because Biden ran on that agenda, but because coalition convenience rewarded accommodation over resistance.
The result was an administration far more aggressive toward tech and markets than many anticipated, driven less by conviction than by internal coalition management. Importantly, the shift was not a demand to live up to a campaign promise to the working class, or an appeal to swing voters. This focus on appeasing activists and the MSNBC wing of the party ultimately weakened the party’s appeal with voters, who hold a positive view of tech.