Open Markets’ executive director Barry Lynn was quoted urging President Biden to flaunt his solid track record on fighting corporate power during his reelection campaign.

“You’ve got people who have been waiting for the end of neoliberalism,” Lynn said. “And we have the guy who has the answer.”

A contingent of progressive Democrats and White House allies are privately urging President Joe Biden’s team to use Thursday’s debate to recast his candidacy as an attack on the billionaires and big businesses that Donald Trump has increasingly embraced.

These Democrats have pleaded with Biden’s advisers to adopt a more bluntly populist message as a response to two problems: that Trump is still winning over more voters on the issue of the economy, according to polls, and that many Americans remain unaware of Biden’s record of taking on powerful mega-corporations.

The campaign to date, they worry, has given short shrift to the most ambitious economic policymaking that’s happened on his watch. It has struggled to find a consistent message, and has not always led first with the economy — prioritizing issues like democracy and abortion too, even as many voters rank the cost of living as their most pressing issue.

“Biden is taking a lot of that populist fight and making it real — he’s doing it through policy and on a whole variety of scores,” said Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has spoken with Biden aides on the issue. “The problem on the Biden side is we’re not getting the political squeeze out of the policymaking.”

Progressives have long believed that Biden should position himself as more of an enemy of the CEO class, arguing that his most populist policies are also his most popular ones.

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