Let's talk Third Way. Some links about its founding and the founders. [View all]

[madfloridian]

One link I found at The Guardian in 2003 recounts the founding and purpose from the point of view of Tony Blair.

A brief history of the third way

What was the third way all about?
The so-called third way is New Labour's attempt to build itself an ideological foundation. In the face of accusations that the decision to re-christen the party and re-write clause IV was motivated purely by electoralism, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson sought to prove their ideological convictions.

.....Wasn't Bill Clinton involved?
Bill Clinton's electoral success after renaming his party the New Democrats was an inspiration to Mr Blair and his fellow Labour modernisers. Both shared the belief that a new ideological compass was needed.

In September 1998, Mr Clinton and Mr Blair held a conference in New York to officially launch their new ideology. Both said they rejected the neo-liberal belief that everything can be left to the market, but also saw the traditional left-of-centre faith in state intervention in the economy as outdated.

.....What's the state of play now?
Three years on, however, the outlook for the third way looks bleak. A Republican is in the White House and Mr Schröder has turned away from his earlier fascination with the Clinton-Blair outlook towards a more traditional leftwing stance.

TIME carried an article about this in 1998. They called it the Third Way Wonkfest. The link is still there, but it's behind a firewall. I saved a few paragraphs.

Tony Blair, the New Dems and the Third Way Wonkfest 1998.

After Bill Clinton and Tony Blair finish with the elegant dinners and toasts at the G-8 summit this week in England, the real fun begins: the two leaders will lock themselves in a room with a clutch of top officials to talk about government policy for four or five hours. The Sunday meeting at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country mansion north of London, will be the third such bilateral seminar, following one at the White House, when Blair visited in February, and the inaugural 12-hr. "wonkathon" at Chequers in November, when Hillary Clinton sat in for her husband.

The lofty chatfests symbolize the intimate political relationship between Clinton, a "new Democrat," and Blair, creator of new Labour. Each claims to embody a type of politics that is not just a poll-driven centrism but a "third way," a favorite Blair slogan and a phrase that Clinton highlighted in this year's State of the Union message. "Both governments have to react to challenges like globalization and better education for workers, and we have similar perspectives on what's needed," says White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, who organizes the meetings with his British counterpart, David Miliband, Blair's policy chief.

On the agenda for Chequers are social security, welfare, crime, health policy and education, with eight to 10 participants from each side.

The DLC, a very strong think tank at the time, were very pleased that Tony Blair was in support of the Iraq War. In fact they even named the Democrats who voted for the war the "Blair Democrats."

From the WP

The Blair Democrats: Ready for Battle

Will Marshall May 1, 2003

The U.S.-led coalition's stunning success in liberating Iraq is undoubtedly a triumph for President Bush. But Karl Rove shouldn't get too giddy, because it may be a boon for some Democrats, too.

After all, four of the leading Democratic presidential contenders -- Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sens. Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards -- not only voted to support the war but also joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair in demanding that Bush challenge the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities to disarm Iraq. This position put these "Blair Democrats" in sync with the vast majority of Americans who said they would much rather attack Saddam Hussein's regime with United Nations backing than without it. And it puts them at odds with what Kerry called the "blustery unilateralism" of the president, which combined with French obstructionism to rupture not only the United Nations but the Atlantic alliance as well.

Like Bush, these Democrats did not shrink from the use of force to end Hussein's reign of terror. Like Blair, they saw the Iraq crisis as a test of Western resolve and the United Nations' credibility as an effective instrument of collective security.

And from Lee Fang at The Nation in 2013:

GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for the Democratic Party

Third Way, a centrist think tank that portrays itself as a Democratic group, has some advice for the party: avoid economic populism at all costs. In a column for The Wall Street Journal today, the group argues that the party should steer clear of creating a strong safety net, and criticizes Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s call for universal pre-K funded through an upper-income tax increase as a foolhardy idea for national Democrats.


......Buried inside the annual report for Third Way is a revelation that the group relies on a peculiar DC consulting firm to raise half a million a year: Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart. Peck Madigan is no ordinary nonprofit buckraiser. The group is, in fact, a corporate lobbying firm that represents Deutsche Bank, Intel, the Business Roundtable, Amgen, AT&T, the International Swaps & Derivatives Association, MasterCard, New York Life Insurance, PhRMA and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.

The two organizations complement each other well. Peck Madigan signs as a lobbyist for the government of New Zealand on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal; Third Way aggressively promotes the deal. Peck Madigan clients push for entitlement cuts, and so does Third Way.

Notice that Humana, a major health insurance company, lists its $50,000 donation to Third Way not as a donation to a think tank but as part of its yearly budget spent on lobbying activity, up there with the Florida Chamber and other trade associations. The company views financial gifts to Third Way as part of its strategy for increasing its profit-making political influence.

What’s more, Third Way’s leadership has tenuous connections to the Democratic Party it hopes to shape. Daniel Loeb, a hedge fund manager listed as a trustee on Third Way’s 2012 annual disclosure, bundled $556,031 for Mitt Romney last year. Third Way board member Derek Kaufman, another hedge fund executive, also gave to Romney.

They call themselves "progressives", but they are not at all.

They represent everything that Bernie Sanders is opposing right now.

Bill Clinton was there at the founding of the DLC as well. The founder, Al From, made it clear they wanted to have a "bloodless revolution" in our Democratic Party.

The DLC group is sometimes portrayed as a pro-Wall Street set of lobbyists. And From did recruit hedge fund legends like Michael Steinhardt to fund his movement. But to argue these people were corrupt or motivated by a pay to play form of politics is wrong. From is clearly a reformer and an ideologue, and his colleagues believed they were serving the public interest. “Make no mistake about it,” wrote From in a memo about his organization’s strategy, “what we hope to accomplish with the DLC is a bloodless revolution in our party." It is not unlike what the conservatives accomplished in the Republican Party during the 1960s and 1970s.

Al From's words to Bill Clinton about NAFTA show whose interests the DLC and its new form, the Third Way, had in mind.

'“Politically, a victory on NAFTA would assert your leadership over your own party by making it clear that you, not the Democratic leadership in Congress or the interest groups, set the Democratic Party’s agenda on matters of real national importance.”

They may claim to be "progressives", but in thought and deed the two groups are/were "conservative."