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The Clinton creation Third Way has been controlling the DNC since Clinton left office.
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Third Way in struggle for the Democratic Party’s soul
By Noah Bierman Globe Staff,October 6, 2014, 1:14 a.m.
Protesters gathered outside Third Way’s offices in Washington, D.C., in December 2013, asking the group to reveal its funding sources. (YOUTUBE)
WASHINGTON — On a summer afternoon amid the frenzy of the Democratic National Convention in Boston 10 years ago, a group of Washington business lobbyists, political operatives, and a smattering of senators gathered at one of the city’s downtown law firms to hear a plan.
Members of the group worried that, with the end of the Bill Clinton era, the Democratic Party’s centrist wing had lost its way. Over sodas, they pitched a new think tank named for Clinton’s political philosophy, Third Way.
Fast forward a decade: The philosophy, sketched out privately at the Boston office of Brown Rudnick, is now at the center of an intense struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
Third Way, backed by Wall Street titans, corporate money, and congressional allies, is publicly warning against divisive “soak-the-rich” politics voiced by populist Democrats. Its target: Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator whose rise to power two years ago helped galvanize Democratic grass roots against Wall Street and pushed the issue of income inequality to the forefront.
This is more than a grudge match. At stake for the Democratic Party is the support of middle-class, swing voters who decide elections.
Third Way ignited a clash in December when its leaders essentially declared war on Warren in a guest column in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, warning Democrats not to follow Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “over the populist cliff.”
Many on the left were shocked, and angered. Warren’s allies saw Third Way as a proxy — being used by her enemies on Wall Street to scare off the rest of the party.
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Wall Street is extremely good at pushing anybody that is critical of them as being populist, or know-nothings,” said Ted Kaufman, who temporarily served as an appointed US senator to replace Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., then succeeded Warren in leading a special congressional panel that oversaw the bank bailout.
For their part, Third Way representatives bristle at the idea they are doing the bidding of Wall Street power brokers.
With the income gap growing between most of the nation’s taxpayers and the wealthiest 1 percent, the battle is over how aggressively the party’s candidates — including, potentially, Hillary Clinton — will contrast themselves with Republicans on tax and economic issues in 2016.
The philosophy set out by Third Way will be part of that conversation.
The organization publicly discloses little about its funding.
But a Globe examination of public documents and the backgrounds of its leadership offers a window into how some wealthy Wall Street and business interests — who contribute generously to Democratic candidates — have sought to tip the Democratic Party’s intellectual debate against populism.
Third Way raises just over a third of its $9.3 million annual budget from undisclosed corporations. The remainder, the bulk of its funding, is donated by individuals, almost all of whom
are members of Third Way’s board of trustees.
The group is dominated by executives from the financial industry, people who are typically the targets of the populist rhetoric of Warren, and sometimes even President Obama.
Two-thirds of its 31 trustees have held senior leadership positions in investment funds or big banks or served in some other capacity on Wall Street.
Board members include its chairman, John Vogelstein, who once led the private equity firm Warburg Pincus; vice chairman David Heller, the former global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs; and Derek Kirkland, a managing director at Morgan Stanley.
