Centrists Are Cooking Up a Project 2025 of Their Own -- And Progressives Won't Like It
Politico
If you ask folks at Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, one of their party’s big challenges right now has a lot less to do with policy than with personnel: Pols like President Joe Biden win office by capturing the middle of the electorate, but then stock their administration with foot soldiers of the left.
“The center left tends to win at the ballot box, and then we’re outgunned the other 364 days of the year,” Communications Director Kate deGruyter told me. “And so we have to recognize that there’s an investment required in being able to make sure that the ideas that we see are popular."
This month, Third Way is rolling out that investment: Instead of publishing a new bunch of white papers full of centrist policy proposals, it’s launching a “talent bank” aimed at stocking a second Biden administration, or some other future Democratic government, with well vetted political hires who fit Third Way’s moderate brand.
In the process, the organization is part of an underappreciated new trend at Beltway policy organizations, where white papers are giving way to a kind of wonk fantasy football as think tanks create in-house government HR shops that aim to have a cadre of ideologically simpatico political appointees ready to go on day one.
“We’re ensuring that center-left Democrats have a seat at the table,” said Destine Hicks-Lundy, a former Biden White House staffer who joined the think tank last week to lead the initiative, which is part of a new effort known as the Moderate Power Project. “We’re making contact with every moderate Democrat that is interested.”
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