I was Biden's national policy director for his winning 2020 presidential campaign. Here's my advice for 2026 and 2028 Democratic candidates navigating "the groups" and hot-button social issues.

We all remember how 2024 Kamala Harris struggled to distance herself from some of the far-left positions she took during the 2019 primary. Well, aspiring 2028 Democratic presidential candidates are already starting to stake out or revise their positions on key issues. This reality means that the viability of our 2028 Democratic presidential nominee is currently at risk. The same is true for other competitive 2026 and 2028 races.

This post contains my thoughts on how Democratic candidates can effectively develop their policy agendas, navigate “the groups,” and tackle hot-button social issues. My reflections are largely based on my experience serving as the policy director for Joe Biden’s winning 2020 presidential campaign. Yes, I’m going to talk about that famous ACLU questionnaire.

Lesson 1: Map your policies to your values

This might sound simple, but not everyone follows this rule: run on policies that align with your values. If you don’t have a good sense of your values yet, don’t run. This approach is how you run an authentic campaign. Authenticity is critical to victory. Plus, why run at all if you are not sticking with your values?

One strength of 2019/2020 Biden was that he knew why he was running and what he was willing to lose over. My job as his campaign policy director was to develop a policy agenda and messaging that mapped onto his values. That job was made much easier by the fact that his values were so clear.

Compared to the rest of the field, Biden was generally more centrist. We stuck with his centrist positions despite the fact that most of the Democratic primary candidates tried to chase Sanders to the left. Until the pandemic, we also stuck with a budget; we had a set of revenue raisers Biden supported and that placed a limit on how much we could spend on all of his policy proposals. (I’ll write more later on how this approach changed once the pandemic hit and what I think about all of the arguments that Biden shifted left in the general election and while governing.)

Candidates who don’t know why they are running and what they are willing to lose over can get overwhelmed by message testing and advice from political advisors. These candidates are ultimately swayed by the loudest voices. The loudest voices probably do not represent the candidate or the American electorate. You need to know your values before you enter the race and don’t lose sight of them.

Lesson 2: Lean in to your quirks

No candidate squarely fits in one faction of the Democratic party on every single issue. Lean into places where you break expectations.

In 2019, I made sure we went big on areas where Biden instinctively was, well, very progressive. Biden was very forward-leaning on gun regulations and gun safety and far more comfortable talking about the issue than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. At one point in the primary, we started heavily emphasizing guns in order to distinguish him from Sanders and Warren in a surprising way (from the left). There were a couple months where pretty much every week Biden led a message event on guns.

Biden was also very far left on union issues/workers’ rights and quite comfortable going after big corporations and, most of all, big tech.

Lastly, Biden was pretty far left on transgender issues, at least for 2019. He talked about transgender rights as the civil rights issue of our time. (I plan to write in the future about how I think this issue went sideways during his Administration.)

On union/workers’ rights, anti-big corporations and tech, and transgender issues, we again let Biden be Biden.

Biden’s lefty leaning on these issues helped him, in the end, gain some level of credibility from the left once they realized that he was going to be the candidate. It also helped him win over some single-issue voters who might have otherwise chosen a more all-around progressive candidate.

Most importantly, I believe Biden’s lefty leanings in these areas helped prevent moments of panic that could have increased the likelihood he or the campaign leadership would shift to the left on other issues where he wasn’t actually left. Because he was instinctually left on these issues, he came across as more authentic than if he ran left on an issue where he wasn’t actually left.

Lesson 3: If you’re going to change your mind, have a good explanation and pick your flip flops wisely

It is ok to change your mind sometimes. Don’t try to gaslight America into believing you always held your new position. You need to have a good explanation for why you changed your mind. You probably have one or two chances to flip flop and you cannot flip flop on the really big issues.

Biden held steady with his views, despite pressure to shift left during the campaign. I can think of one exception, which is his flip flop on the Hyde Amendment (the ban on the use of federal funding for abortions). Early on in the campaign, Biden affirmed his longstanding position that he did NOT support overturning the Hyde Amendment. The pushback from women’s groups was swift and fierce. At some point, Biden and the campaign’s political advisors decided the position was unsustainable. One of the political advisors called me and asked me to come up with a reasonable justification for him to change his position on Hyde.

I had an idea. Biden had recently proposed a health care plan that would have provided a free, Medicaid-like public health insurance plan to low-income individuals in states that did not take up the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. This setup, for the first time, would create a group of individuals who received health insurance that was 100% funded by the federal government (Medicaid is partially state funded, so states can chose to fund abortion with their own dollars). With Hyde in place, there would be no way to provide abortion coverage to this group. Biden did believe every woman should be able to have abortion coverage. So, I pitched this explanation to Biden and the political folks and then Biden announced his policy shift. I don’t think the rationale ever totally broke through, but it helped mitigate some amount of the early “elite” and reporter blowback to the flip flop.

On the other hand, other 2019 primary candidates’ flip flops on their health care plans were disastrous. They flip flopped on the defining issue of the 2019 primary and did not have a good explanation.

Lesson 4: If you disagree, just say no!

Do not be afraid to tell interests groups, voters, or your political advisors “no.”

One of my favorite moments on the Biden 2020 campaign occurred toward the end of the primary, when we were pretty sure Biden was going to secure the nomination and it was just a question of when Sanders would drop out. This moment occurred during the early days of COVID, so I was prepping Biden by phone for a video meeting with a leading women’s group. Another person on the team started explaining to Biden an abortion-related issue the group was going to press him on and encouraging him to agree with the group. He said he did not agree. Some political advisors chimed in regarding how well the group’s position played with women. I could hear in his voice that he was resistant. I said, “Sir, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” He immediately responded, “I’m not doing it.” During the meeting, Biden held his position and the group endorsed him anyways.

Lesson 5: Sometimes, it is best to not say anything at all

If the policy position you are considering is contentious and you do not need to make the issue a campaign priority, try to not say anything at all.

One of the biggest mistakes I see candidates make is that they announce contentious policy positions when they did not have to say anything at all. Candidates sometimes make this mistake by commenting on issues that have absolutely no relevance to their potential role (e.g., someone running for Congress taking a contentious position on an issue that will be decided by the city council). Candidates also make this mistake by inserting themselves into a conversation (especially an online conversation) because they want to be a part of it even though no one is asking them to weigh in. Most often, candidates make this mistake by answering questions from interest groups.

We’ve now arrived at the portion of this post where we finally get to talk about the infamous American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) questionnaire that the organization asked Democratic presidential candidates to complete in 2019. I received the questionnaire at the Biden campaign, read it, and decided that we did not need to fill it out. Biden’s answer was “no” to a lot of the questions. I firmly believed he should stick with his views (see lesson 1 and 4 above). We could have returned the questionnaire with a bunch of “no” answers, but we did not see much value in doing so.

Fast forward a couple of months and some of the political team on the Biden campaign learned that the ACLU was sending out mail to South Carolina voters about the fact that he had not responded to the questionnaire. My campaign colleagues asked me why we had not responded. The senior advisors thought my explanation made sense.

During the general election, the ACLU made another attempt at securing a response from Biden. Some advisors from other presidential campaigns had joined the Biden team at this point. They strongly pushed for Biden to fill out the questionnaire. I maintained that his answers were “no,” we were not going to and should not try to change his answers, and we had nothing to gain from submitting the questionnaire. We never did submit it.

Of course, you probably know about this questionnaire because Harris (or at least her campaign) DID respond. Harris marked “yes” in response to a question about whether she would use executive action to ensure that transgender and non-binary people, including those in prison and immigration detention, received comprehensive gender confirmation care.

In September 2024, CNN reporter and opposition research master Andrew Kaczynksi dug up Harris’s completed questionnaire and published a story about it. The Trump team took notice and used it to attack Harris, most notably in an ad that said “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” I don’t think this line of attack cost Harris the election, but it certainly did not help. It fed the perception that she was far too left for the majority of Americans.

Screenshot from Trump 2024 Ad

Did Harris approve the questionnaire answer or did her staff fill it out without her knowledge? Did her “yes” answer to this question reflect her values or did she feel pressure to say “yes” and make ACLU happy? I don’t know the answer to these questions. I do think her policy approach in 2019 suggests that she was guided by her reading of political winds more than her own values.

She could have simply not responded.

Conclusion: But don’t I need to take policy positions that set me up to win?

The pushback to this advice is that candidates need to shape their policy positions to set them up to secure votes, money, and endorsements.

My response with respect to voters is that candidates should run if and only if they believe they can effectively represent the views of their future constituents while remaining consistent with their personal values. On the margins, an elected official can shape public opinion. But generally, elected officials should represent the views of their constituents instead of trying to convince their constituents to change their minds.

The story regarding donors is a bit more complicated. Until we achieve the utopia of publicly funded elections, candidates should think critically about what concessions they might need to make to secure donors or keep donor groups (for example, crypto) from funding the other guy. First, carefully analyze what sacrifices you REALLY need to make. Second, determine how much you are willing to sacrifice. Third, integrate these sacrifices into the flip flop calculus (lesson 3).

As for interest group endorsements (which often come with money and manpower), well, I only partially agree with the strongest centrist Democratic pushback against “the groups.” I agree that interest groups largely do not represent the actual people they claim to represent. I agree that interest groups like the ACLU are pursuing tactics that hurt Democratic candidates and, in turn, hurt their causes. These groups need to seriously consider their long-term strategy. Are they better off with an imperfect Democratic president in 2029 or JD Vance?

I disagree with centrist Democrats that simply blame the interest groups. I believe the final responsibility in this dynamic lies with the candidates, not the groups. The best candidates will just say no when an interest group pushes a policy that does not align with their values.

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