So who's our boss now? Who has our politicians firmly in hand? [View all]

[madfloridian]

First off, I neither trust nor like Fox News Democratic (?) strategist Kirsten Powers. I find it hard to believe the name of her new book... “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech”. ''

But in 2011 when the Democratic Leadership Council, our old policy shop by their own words, died it just automatically became the Third Way. Her post from that time at The Daily Beast was very clear on that.

DLC Shut Down: The Democrats’ New Power Base

The Democratic Leadership Council may be shutting down, but the progressives haven't won. Centrism is alive and well in the think tank Third Way, whose advice on health care and the economy has swayed the White House.

Monday’s news that the Democratic Leadership Council is folding after three decades was greeted with glee by those on the left who see it as evidence that centrism has gasped its last breath.

Not so fast.

...Third Way was launched in 2005 with four employees and has since has grown into a serious player within the party, with 37 staffers and a budget of $7.5 million. It was founded by veteran Democratic politicos—Jon Cowan, Jim Kessler, Matt Bennett, and Nancy Hale—who previously launched and ran a successful centrist gun control organization, Americans for Gun Safety.

...These are no mere hacks. They are as steeped in the policy as they are wise about the political realities that Democrats face in a country where liberals are a distinct minority. They don’t deign to tell Americans what they should believe—the favorite game of too many liberals—but instead craft realistic policy proposals that have a chance of gaining some sort of popular support.

And catch this part:

More recently, when the White House announced that the theme of the upcoming State of the Union would be shifting from “economic security” to “economic growth,” a light bulb went off. The phrase was one I had heard time and again from Third Way, which had been arguing that Democrats needed to make a dramatic shift away from focusing on the safety net and economic security to an aspirational, positive vision of private sector economic growth. It turns out Third Way formulated a memo making this case that made its way to the White House, and a new strategy was adopted.

Remember the Chained CPI? That was their brainchild as well.

The head of the Third Way, Jonathan Cowan, has spoken out for cutting Social Security benefits since the 90s. Here is an editorial by him from 1993.

An Appeal To Grandma And Grandpa

We write to ask for your help. We're in a financial mess, and unless everyone in our family gets together to fix the problem, we're heading for "economic and fiscal catastrophe." That's not a phrase we picked up on MTV-it's from a recent U.S. government report on the budget deficit.

.... We are not ungrateful. We respect and value the sacrifices you've made for our country and have no desire to take money away from those in need. But our generation is in trouble. We were educated in a collapsing school system. Our incomes and skill levels are lower than any previous generation-by the year 2000 over one-third of younger Americans will be living in poverty. And we will be the first Americans to inherit a lower standard of living than our parents.

We're not asking that your generation solve all our problems. And there certainly are many other programs that also must be cut to get the deficit under control. But Social Security must be considered, just like everything else in the budget.

And a post by Markos at Daily Kos in 2013 really hits the pertinent points.

Third Way fantasizes that Democrats want a more conservative Obama

With the demise of the corporatist right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), Third Way has filled the void. Unlike the then-flashy and public DLC, Third Way operates mostly in the shadows, presenting as small a target as possible while insidiously worming its way into the D.C. party establishment.

....All of this is par for the course for an organization that offered up this terrible pre-election advice:

"By siding with public anger against big banks and pushing for higher taxes on millionaires, Obama may make Americans more unhappy about wide income inequality, which could hurt his re-election bid.

"Populism is predicated on people feeling that they are getting the short stick," said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a nonpartisan think-tank in Washington.

"In tough economic times, optimists win presidential races and pessimists lose. It is very hard to be both a populist and have a sunny view of America's future," Kessler said."

Markos quotes a Pew study:

So what about the New Dems/Third Way/DLC types? Pew calls them "post-moderns":

Post-Moderns are largely white, well-educated and affluent. They also share a relatively secular outlook on some social issues, including homosexuality and abortion (...)

Post-Moderns are less supportive of increased aid for the needy and are far less likely to view racial discrimination as the main obstacle to African American progress."

And his own words:

These are Wall Street asshole corporatist Democrats (which literally dominate Third Way). They are correct on social issues, very very wrong on economic ones.

And I would expect Simon Rosenberg regrets ever saying these words about changing the party so as not to need its traditional constituents.

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

Yes, I quoted that before and will quote it again. The groups changed in name only.

The corporations are still our bosses.