“The coun­try was­n’t built by Wall Street bankers, CEOs and hedge fund man­agers,” Joe Biden told a crowd at a Mon­day cam­paign ral­ly held in a Team­sters hall, his first appear­ance as an offi­cial 2020 candidate.

The first time Biden publicly opened the door to a possible 2020 run, he was standing among figures from the hedge fund industry.

This is like­ly a dif­fer­ent mes­sage than what Biden has been send­ing to hedge fund man­agers them­selves, whom he has spent the two years lead­ing up to his announce­ment aggres­sive­ly court­ing. These titans of finance cap­i­tal have also been among Biden’s ear­ly supporters.

In fact, the first time Biden pub­licly opened the door to a pos­si­ble 2020 run, he was stand­ing among fig­ures from the hedge fund indus­try. After months of flat out denials, Biden first admit­ted he ​“may very well do it” at the Sky­bridge Alter­na­tives (SALT) Con­fer­ence in May 2017, where he appeared as a keynote speak­er. SALT is an annu­al con­fer­ence bring­ing togeth­er hedge funds in Las Vegas orga­nized and run by Antho­ny Scara­muc­ci, the hedge fund oper­a­tor who briefly served as Pres­i­dent Trump’s White House com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor in 2017. While Biden is not list­ed as a speak­er for this year’s SALT, his pic­ture is still fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the front page of its website.

Atten­dees at the 2017 con­fer­ence includ­ed bil­lion­aire investor Sam Zell, The Car­lyle Group co-founder and Co-Exec­u­tive Chair­man David Ruben­stein, hedge fund man­ag­er James Chanos, Mil­wau­kee Bucks co-own­er and Avenue Cap­i­tal Group co-founder Marc Las­ry, as well as a host of celebri­ties and polit­i­cal fig­ures such as Karl Rove and Don­na Brazile. Much of the cov­er­age of the event at the time focused on Biden’s teased pres­i­den­tial run and his testy, pos­si­bly mis­re­port­ed exchange with bil­lion­aire hedge fund man­ag­er Bill Ack­man. But Biden was well-received at the event, receiv­ing a stand­ing ova­tion from the 2,000-strong crowd of Wall Street bigwigs.

Biden’s speech report­ed­ly paint­ed an image of the kind of uni­fied, coop­er­a­tive Amer­i­can poli­ty that tends to ani­mate his world­view, one where com­pet­ing inter­ests work togeth­er and the coun­try func­tions more as a sin­gu­lar team than one marked by class divi­sions. The Unit­ed States had a pletho­ra of research uni­ver­si­ties and the ​“most nim­ble” ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, he told the gath­er­ing. And while hoard­ing their wealth wouldn’t enrich the econ­o­my, he said, invest­ing in edu­ca­tion and oth­er pub­lic goods would.

This wasn’t the only time Biden spoke along­side such an ultra-wealthy crowd that year. At an event at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware in April 2017 to pro­mote his Biden Insti­tute—which describes itself as a ​“a research and pol­i­cy cen­ter” aim­ing to ​“influ­ence, shape, and work to solve the most press­ing domes­tic pol­i­cy prob­lems fac­ing Amer­i­ca” — Biden con­vened a pan­el called ​“Win-Win: How the Long View Works for Busi­ness and the Mid­dle Class.” At the pan­el, Biden was joined by var­i­ous cor­po­rate exec­u­tives and fig­ures from the invest­ment indus­try. He kicked things off by expound­ing on the virtues of a strong mid­dle class, whose fate, he said, depend­ed on ​“what com­pa­nies decide to do with their prof­its”: invest them in ​“research, train­ing, equip­ment” or plow them back into ​“share­hold­er payout.”

The eight-mem­ber pan­el—con­sist­ing of Biden, var­i­ous cor­po­rate exec­u­tives and two uni­ver­si­ty asso­ciates — was crit­i­cal of both cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, which they argued was dri­ven to short-term think­ing by fear of poor quar­ter­ly per­for­mance, and of hedge fund man­agers who pushed exec­u­tives into such behavior.

Yet sev­er­al of these pan­elists were them­selves mem­bers of the hedge fund world: Carsten Sten­de­vad of Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates, which recent­ly topped the list of the world’s biggest and most prof­itable hedge funds; Sarah Williamson, a for­mer part­ner and 21-year vet­er­an of hedge fund man­ag­er Welling­ton Man­age­ment Co. who sat on its Hedge Fund Over­sight Com­mit­tee; Charles Elson, a finance pro­fes­sor at the uni­ver­si­ty who just months before was nom­i­nat­ed to run a hedge fund; and Mark Wise­man, the Glob­al Head of Active Equi­ty at Black­Rock, the world’s largest asset man­ag­er with bil­lions of dol­lars invest­ed in hedge funds, in which the firm is increas­ing investment.

The fol­low­ing year, Biden looked part­ly to the hedge fund world to fill out his insti­tute’s Pol­i­cy Advi­so­ry Board, adding for­mer hedge fund boss and major Oba­ma bundler Eric Mindich as well as a num­ber of employ­ees and vet­er­ans of firms such as Black­Rock, Mor­gan Stan­ley and JP Mor­gan Chase. The Advi­so­ry Board’s mis­sion involved draft­ing ​“a set of new pol­i­cy ideas to make sure Amer­i­cans are able to obtain qual­i­ty jobs that will grow the mid­dle class and our econ­o­my.” Mindich, for his part, has also promised to help Biden raise mon­ey for his cur­rent campaign.

Such events con­tin­ued into 2018. Ear­ly that year, Biden report­ed­ly attend­ed a fundrais­er at the home of Laeti­tia Gar­riott de Cayeux, a career-long hedge fund exec­u­tive, and was the spe­cial guest at a $10,000 per per­son din­ner for House Democ­rats at the afore­men­tioned James Chanos’ home. Chanos, a bil­lion­aire who made his for­tune by bet­ting on the fall in val­ue of com­pa­ny stocks, has said Biden would ​“make a great pres­i­dent” and ​“hits a chord with the mid­dle class,” pledg­ing to ​“sup­port him any way I can.”

Mean­while, Flori­da bil­lion­aire Mar­sha Laufer, whose hus­band Hen­ry served as an exec­u­tive at the $57 bil­lion hedge fund Renais­sance Tech­nolo­gies, had kind words for Biden before he joined the race, say­ing he rep­re­sents ​“sta­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ment, truth and val­ues in a tra­di­tion­al sense that peo­ple are long­ing for,” while express­ing fear about the Democ­rats’ left­ward shift.

It appears Biden may be return­ing to this well even after tak­ing a rhetor­i­cal jab at ​“Wall Street bankers, CEOs and hedge fund man­agers.” Some of those slat­ed to attend an LA fundrais­er for Biden next month include: Richard Blum, hedge fund man­ag­er, pri­vate equi­ty investor and hus­band of Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Dianne Fein­stein; James Cos­tos, board mem­ber of PJT Part­ners Inc.; and Martha Karsh, whose hus­band, Bruce, co-found­ed pri­vate equi­ty firm Oak­tree Capital.

Biden’s close­ness to the indus­try is noth­ing new. A 2015 let­ter signed by near­ly 50 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty donors and activists urg­ing Biden to run for pres­i­dent the fol­low­ing year fea­tured long­time hedge fund man­ag­er Jim Tor­rey as well as oth­er finance exec­u­tives. Biden’s 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was fined $219,000 by the FEC part­ly because three mem­bers of the cam­paign took a flight on a pri­vate jet owned by the Clin­ton Group, a New York-based hedge fund. And Biden’s son Hunter was pre­vi­ous­ly chair­man of Par­a­digm, a now-defunct fund of hedge funds he ran along­side Biden’s broth­er, James.

Along­side this rela­tion­ship to hedge funds, Biden has been heav­i­ly court­ing labor union sup­port for his pres­i­den­tial run. He opened his cam­paign with an endorse­ment from the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Fire Fight­ers, has spo­ken in union halls and in front of union audi­ences in the lead up to his run (includ­ing on the day he announced), and recent­ly said that ​“I make no apolo­gies — I am a union man.” This is despite union antipa­thy toward hedge funds, which have a his­to­ry of deplet­ing pen­sion funds through poor per­for­mance and exor­bi­tant fees.

These events sug­gest the con­tours of what Biden’s cam­paign and poten­tial gov­ern­ing style may look like. Biden will like­ly con­tin­ue seek­ing the sup­port of unions while play­ing up his work­ing-class, Scran­ton roots in pub­lic speech­es, while qui­et­ly court­ing hedge fund man­agers and oth­er cor­po­rate and Wall Street exec­u­tives for funding.

Mean­while, unlike Bernie Sanders, one of his chief rivals for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion who frames the rela­tion­ship between cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca and work­ing peo­ple as antag­o­nis­tic, these episodes sug­gest Biden sees this rela­tion­ship as a fun­da­men­tal­ly coop­er­a­tive one.

As Biden said at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion in May 2018, ​“I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 bil­lion­aires are the rea­son why we’re in trou­ble.” He went on to say, ​“The folks at the top are not bad guys… wealthy Amer­i­cans are just as patri­ot­ic as poor folks.”

In this view, Wall Street and cor­po­rate exec­u­tives serve as key stake­hold­ers who must help shape gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, with Biden act­ing as a kind of bro­ker between them and the rest of the pub­lic. It’s an approach not dis­sim­i­lar from that tak­en by pre­vi­ous Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents in the post-Rea­gan era.

But can such a coali­tion of the work­ing class and ultra-rich exec­u­tives hold togeth­er through­out the cam­paign, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time of pop­ulist anger and his­toric wealth inequal­i­ty? With a dan­ger­ous bil­lion­aire real estate mogul in the White House, that’s one risky proposition.