Biden hasn’t yet secured the Democratic nomination, much less defeated President Donald Trump, of course. And even if Biden wins in November, there are no guarantees that he would prove any friendlier to K Street than Barack Obama, who once pledged that lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House.”
Still, Democratic lobbyists expect a Biden administration would be easier to deal with than a Sanders one.
“You sort of know what a Biden administration looks like, and there’s a sense of comfort in that,” said Ivan Zapien, a lobbyist and former Democratic congressional staffer.
Biden, for instance, is less likely to attack companies routinely and by name on Twitter, as both Sanders and Trump have done — a point Monument Advocacy made in the memo it sent to clients after Sanders’ win in Nevada.
“Like President Trump, Bernie uses twitter to target businesses and industries,” the firm
warned in its memo. “While his 9.1 million followers trail the President’s 40 million plus by a significant margin, his tweets are often just as biting and targeted at the C-suite, often by name.”
Matt McAlvanah, a former Obama administration official who wrote the memo, wrote in an email to POLITICO that Biden’s comeback “has calmed many nerves.”
“Businesses are hopeful that it’s a signal that we’re not entering an era of bouncing from one ideological extreme to the other,” he wrote.
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