Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?

Nearly eight years have passed since Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, launched his first run for US president. The economic populist outsider rocked the establishment as he mounted a fierce challenge to frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Sanders lost but put issues such as class inequality, universal healthcare and the negative effects of globalisation in mainstream political discourse.

Four years later, Sanders ran and lost again. But whereas the battle with Clinton had turned bitter, their mutual antipathy palpable, the relationship with Biden proved constructive. The president included progressive voices in his administration and, along with his chief of staff, Ron Klain, committed to keeping the door open to Sanders and his allies.

The upshot has been an agenda more ambitious in scope and scale than many imagined and a Democratic president working more closely with progressives than Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did.

Few disputed that Biden and Sanders share an authenticity and do not come over as polished, scripted or elitist. Faiz Shakir, chief political adviser to Sanders, recalls that during the 2020 campaign, many Sanders voters said Biden was their second choice and vice versa.

As the party has shifted left, Biden, an old-school pragmatist, was willing to shift with it. Last year he announced a plan for student loan forgiveness. He has pledged to take on corporate greed and malfeasance, stand with workers at Amazon and elsewhere and revive American manufacturing in left-behind communities.

The next two years could be an uphill battle for the Sanders agenda. Republicans control of the House of Representatives and are intent on paralysing the White House with multiple investigations. Klain, lauded for giving a sympathetic ear to the left, departed as chief of staff earlier this month and was succeeded by Jeff Zients, whose background as a wealthy corporate executive alarms progressives.