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The Corporate 'Moderates' Had Their Chance—They Blew It
The moderate establishment looks at this moment and offers more of what created it. More of the same kind of visionless hopeless feckless Democrats, ready to dampen hope and block transformation at every turn. Let's offer what voters are actually asking for: a nation and an economy that work for them.
Nov 09, 2025
Every few years—throughout my entire adult life—I’ve watched the same cycle repeat. Democrats lose ground. The party panics. And like clockwork, the same chorus emerges: opinion writers at the New York Times, former senators, think tank executives, wealthy donors.
They all arrive with the same diagnosis and the same prescription: “Democrats have gone too far left, especially on economic issues.”
It’s deeply ironic. Of all the criticisms you might level at the Democratic Party, moving toward economic populism is not one you can actually make with a straight face. The party has remained steadfastly corporate—if anything, it’s become more so over my lifetime.
But what makes this moment so irritating is that it’s not new advice. This is the same playbook I’ve seen recycled over and over. The Third Way in the Clinton years. James Carville telling us to focus on the economy while signing NAFTA. The Heidi Heitkamps and Jon Testers who were supposed to show us the path forward. And now it’s Ezra Klein in the pages of the Times, holding up Joe Manchin as the model Democrat who could win in deep red states.
Let me tell you something Klein and the rest of this chorus don’t want to acknowledge: they’re not offering a new strategy. They’re screaming for more of what we just had. More of what led us to this authoritarian moment we’re living in. And I know they’re wrong because I can read a map, a calendar, and my own lived experience.
I’m from Tennessee. I watched what happened when Democrats abandoned us.
What Had Happened Was
West Virginia held a Democratic trifecta for 84 consecutive years - from 1930 to 2014. My home state of Tennessee had five Democratic House seats out of nine until 2010. These weren’t marginally competitive states. These were solidly blue, built on New Deal economics and strong unions.
Klein looks at this collapse and concludes Democrats need more Joe Manchins. But Manchin didn’t save West Virginia - he presided over its destruction. His winning margin collapsed from 24 points in 2012 to 3.3 points in 2018 before he quit rather than face voters in 2024. During his 14 years in the Senate, West Virginia went from Bush +6 to Trump +42 - the largest Republican margin in the entire country.
The rest of Klein’s “moderate overperformers”? Jon Tester lost Montana by 11 points in 2024. Claire McCaskill lost Missouri by 6 points in 2018. Heidi Heitkamp lost North Dakota by 11 points. Joe Donnelly lost Indiana by 10 points.
Every single example either lost badly or quit. The only one who came close was Sherrod Brown in Ohio - and he was the economic populist, not the moderate. Brown ran on pro-union, anti-corporate economics and lost by just 3.8 points while outperforming Kamala Harris. The progressive did better than all the moderates.
The Real Story: What Changed and Why
These states didn’t flip because Democrats talked about social issues. They flipped because of systematic economic abandonment by both parties.
We were already on a massive coward manufacturing trajectory but NAFTA was the nail in the coffin. Democrats and Clinton passed it in 1994. The results? West Virginia lost 41.5% of its manufacturing jobs. Tennessee’s textile mills closed and moved to Mexico. Now we import from China what we used to make ourselves - a catastrophic policy choice that made us dependent on a geopolitical rival while devastating American communities.
In West Virginia, union membership collapsed from nearly 500,000 United Mine Workers to fewer than 10,000 today. Coal mining jobs dropped from 130,000 to 12,000. 12,000 West Virginians work at Walmart, btw.
And here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: the answer to coal’s decline wasn’t more coal or Walmart jobs. The answer was making good on the promise of good jobs - building the future instead of clinging to the past. But we didn’t do that. We thought market magic would happen. We offered shitty low-wage service jobs and wondered why people went for Trumpism.
In Tennessee, I watched five Democratic House seats become one. Rural counties that voted for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton now go for Trump by 50-point margins. This happened during the era Klein wants us to return to - the era of moderate Democrats, Third Way centrism, and corporate-friendly economic policy.
Klein’s diagnosis is backwards. These voters don’t call Democrats “preachy” because of pronouns. They call us preachy because we lectured them about being on the right side of history while both parties shipped their jobs to China, bailed out banks while they lost their homes, and got rich in office while their wages stagnated.
The Oligarchy Reveals Itself
If you want to understand what the moderate establishment actually cares about, just look at New York City.
The Democratic primary winner, Zohran Mamdani, got the most votes any candidate has ever received in a NYC Democratic primary. On Tuesday, voters elected the democratic socialist to be mayor of the nation's largest city. He was backed by Governor Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (finally), and the vast majority of major unions.
His opponent was Andrew Cuomo—who resigned as governor after sexually harassing 11 women and is under federal investigation for covering up nursing home deaths. Cuomo lost the Democratic primary badly—and then he lost again in the general running as an Independent against Mamdani.
Mamdani's win is being treated as historic, but who did the establishment back all along the way? Cuomo.
Michael Bloomberg dumped over $8 million into pro-Cuomo super PACs. Bill Ackman, Ken Griffin, Dan Loeb—billionaires and hedge fund managers lined up. Bill Clinton endorsed him. Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) praised his “character.”
Donald Trump and Elon Musk both endorsed Cuomo, with Trump saying plainly: “If it’s between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m going to pick the bad Democrat.”
The same people lecturing progressives about electability backed the Trump-endorsed candidate who resigned in disgrace over the progressive who won the Democratic primary decisively. Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York would not even say if he voted for him or not.
This isn’t about ideology or electability. This is the oligarchy closing ranks. When faced with a candidate who threatened their economic interests—who promised to actually make housing affordable and buses free and childcare accessible—the divisions between establishment Democrats, Republicans, and tech billionaires disappear. They united to protect the extraction economy that’s made them wealthy.
An Inheritance Stolen
Between 1930 and 1975, America built deliberately. The New Deal, the Interstate Highway System, rural electrification, the GI Bill, the space program, Social Security, Medicare—these didn’t happen by accident or market forces. They were planned, funded, and executed by a government that understood its job was to build capacity for everyone.
We inherited the world’s largest economy, built by our grandparents’ generation. And then we fucked it up. For the past 50 years, we’ve let centibillionaires and trillion-dollar companies harvest what our forefathers built. We stopped being a country that builds and became a country that extracts.
And now the people telling us how to win are the same people who oversaw this destruction. They’re telling us the answer is more of what created the problem—more so-called "moderation," more corporate-friendly policy, more means-tested half-measures instead of transformation.
Take healthcare. We spend $5.25 trillion a year—more than double what other countries spend per capita. If market magic were going to solve this, that ought to be enough money. But we don’t have enough doctors, nurses, hospitals, or pharmaceuticals. We have supply deserts because the system optimizes for profit extraction, not capacity building.
The Build Back Better approach follows the same failed logic: pump cash into the system and expect the invisible hand to make it work. But between 1930 and 1975, when we needed hospitals, the government built them. When we needed doctors, we funded medical schools. We didn’t subsidize people to pay inflated prices to monopolies—we built public capacity.
When someone like Mamdani proposes that New York City should have free buses and affordable housing, Abigail Spanberger calls it “unrealistic.” In the richest city in the richest country in human history, basic public services are dismissed as fantasy. That’s what 50 years of extraction looks like—we’ve forgotten we used to build things.
The Power Question
Here’s what Klein completely misses: Sherrod Brown didn’t lose because economic populism doesn’t work. He lost because he was alone.
Voters looked at Brown and thought: even if I elect him, what can he actually do? He’ll get blocked by Manchin types, ignored by leadership, buried in corporate money. He’s one guy against the whole system.
MAGA is a team. Trump has 50+ congresspeople coordinating, governors backing him, and judges ruling for him. When Trump says he’ll do something, voters see organized power capable of delivering.
One senator standing alone doesn’t look like power. It looks like someone who’ll try and fail.
This is why my cohort model isn’t about having “more things” like Klein suggests. It’s about visible, organized power - fifty candidates running together on a binding pledge, coordinating resources, primarying corporate Democrats, backing each other up. That looks like something powerful enough to overcome the system.
The Tea Party did this. They ran coordinated primary challenges and took over the Republican Party because voters saw organized power. Klein wants isolated moderates in red states and isolated progressives in blue states with no coordination, no shared strategy, no mechanism to overcome corporate Democrats blocking change.
What Voters Actually Want
Voters understand the system is rigged. They know both parties sold them out. They know their parents had better lives with less education. They know a single income used to support a family, buy a house, take vacations.
They’ve turned to Trump not because his solutions work, but because he at least acknowledges their rage. Our grandparents and great-grandparents inherited the world’s biggest economy and the elite took it and are renting it back to us. At the same time our own lives getting harder every year.
The moderate establishment looks at this moment and offers more of what created it. More pluralism. More internal disagreement. More of the same kind of visionless hopeless feckless Democrats. Politicians ready to damp hope and vision blocking transformation at every turn.
I suggest we offer what voters are actually asking for: a nation and an economy that work for them. One that creates and builds. One that doesn’t start wars. Doesn’t arm and back genocides. One that hears us.
To build that society we need people and political power capable of rebuilding what’s been systematically dismantled. America isn’t ready for hospice care. We can’t rely on market magic and means-tested subsidies. It’s time we build like our grandparents did.
The moderates had their chance. They lost everywhere. West Virginia, Tennessee, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio - the graveyard is full of moderate Democrats who couldn’t overcome a toxic brand created by 50 years of both parties serving corporate interests.
Klein and co want to try the same thing again and expect different results. I’m saying it’s time to try something that hasn’t failed yet: coordinated economic populism backed by organized power willing to fight the oligarchy that’s strangling this country.
The chorus is loud right now, demanding we go back to what just failed. Time to stop listening and start building.
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Biden National Security Adviser Among Those Crafting 'Project 2029' Policy Agenda for Democrats
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade," said one observer. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
Jun 30, 2025
Amid the latest battle over the direction the Democratic Party should move in, a number of strategists and political advisers from across the center-left's ideological spectrum are assembling a committee to determine the policy agenda they hope will be taken up by a Democratic successor to President Donald Trump.
Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
The project is being assembled by former Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, now co-founder of the policy journal Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and includes Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser under the Biden administration; Jim Kessler, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Progressives on the advisory board for the project include economist Justin Wolfers and former Roosevelt Institute president Felicia Wong, but antitrust expert Hal Singer said any policy agenda aimed at securing a Democratic victory in the 2028 election "needs way more progressives."
As The New York Times noted in its reporting on Project 2029, the panel is being convened amid extensive infighting regarding how the Democratic Party can win back control of the White House and Congress.
After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
Progressives have called on party leaders to back Mamdani, pointing to his popularity with young voters, and accept that his clear message about making life more affordable for working families resonated with Democratic constituents.
But speaking to the Times, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake exemplified how many of the party's strategists have insisted that candidates only need to package their messages to voters differently—not change the messages to match the political priorities of Mamdani and other popular progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
"We didn't lack policies," Lake told the Times of recent national elections. "But we lacked a functioning narrative to communicate those policies."
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have drawn crowds of thousands in red districts this year at Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy rallies—another sign, progressives say, that voters are responding to politicians who focus on billionaires' outsized control over the U.S. political system and on economic justice.
Project 2029's inclusion of strategists like Kessler, who declared economic populism "a dead end for Democrats" in 2013, demonstrates "the whole problem [with Democratic leadership] in a nutshell," said Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass—as does Sullivan's seat on the advisory board.
As national security adviser to President Joe Biden, Sullivan played a key role in the administration's defense and funding of Israel's assault on Gaza, which international experts and human rights groups have said is a genocide.
"Jake Sullivan's been a critical decision-maker in every Democratic catastrophe of the last decade: Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Israel/Gaza War, and the 2024 Joe Biden campaign," said Nick Field of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. "Why is he still in the inner circle?"
"Jake Sullivan is shaping domestic policy for the next Democratic administration," he added. "Who is happy with the Biden foreign policy legacy?"
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WelcomeFest’s Billionaire Backers Reveal Its True Mission
Like Third Way and the Democratic Leadership Council before it, Welcome is yet another donor- and elite-driven operation seeking to drag the Democratic Party rightward on economic policy.
Jun 04, 2025
If the Abundance universe is to be believed, the hottest ticket this summer is WelcomeFest.
Wednesday’s confab is the second such annual gathering organized by the centrist group Welcome Party and its political action committee WelcomePAC, with this year’s event touting a distinct abundance flair. The conference boasts a rogues’ gallery of corporate-friendly cosponsors, including Third Way, the New Democratic Coalition, Inclusive Abundance, and the Blue Dog Caucus. A sizzle reel from last year’s event paints WelcomeFest as an Internet Hippo tweet come to life, complete with cameos from A-listers like ex-CNN anchor John Avlon and Democratic influencer Olivia Julianna.
Taken together, WelcomePAC’s leadership and funding are at odds with their claimed opposition to the “buttoned-up [politics] of Washington elites.”
This year’s “Responsibility to Win” session (misspelled on the event’s official poster) has drawn viral attention online—both for its bizarre AI Ghibli promos and stacked lineup of neoliberal pundits, conservative Democratic lawmakers, and wunderkind pollsters serving up Dick Morris’ reheated leftovers.
Speakers include:
- Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance.
- Matt Yglesias, confidently-wrong pundit and, per Thompson, the “OG grandfather of Abundance.”
- Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who doesn’t think Democrats should use the term “oligarchy.”
- Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Abundance champion and darling of AIPAC and crypto lobbyists.
- Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), and Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.), founding members of the Abundance-themed Build America Caucus.
- Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash). and Jared Golden (D-Maine), current and former co-chairs of the conservative Blue Dog Caucus.
- Adam Jentleson, anti-”Groups” crusader currently distancing himself from his 14-month stint as Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) chief of staff.
- David Shor, pollster and prolific party animal.
WelcomePAC’s Donors
Campaign finance records reveal that WelcomePAC, the primary organizers of WelcomeFest, has raked in sizable contributions from billionaires and corporate oligarchs:
- Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has given over $1.8 million to WelcomePAC since 2021. A major donor to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign and the pro-Harris SuperPAC Future Forward, Hoffman strongly opposed the Biden administration’s anti-monopoly policies and publicly demanded that Harris fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan if she won the election. Hoffman has also bankrolled the Mainstream Democrats super PAC, which spent heavily in Democratic primaries in 2022 and 2024 to defend conservative Democrats like Kurt Schrader and Henry Cuellar and defeat progressives like Cori Bush and Nina Turner.
- Walton family: WelcomePAC has received over $1.1 million from relatives and heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton—the richest family in America.
- S. Robson (Rob) Walton: Rob Walton, the eldest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since 2024.
- Samuel R. Walton: Samuel R. Walton, grandson of Sam Walton and owner of a natural resources holding company, has given $625,000 to WelcomePAC since 2024.
- Christy Walton: Christy Walton, widow of one of Sam Walton’s sons, has given $125,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022.
- Alice Walton: Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, has given $25,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022.
- Carrie Walton Penner: Walton Penner, daughter of Rob Walton, has given $150,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022. She is also a prolific donor to the anti-public education charter school movement.
- Greg Penner: Penner, the husband of Carrie Walton and son-in-law of Rob, has given $150,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022. Penner is also Chairman of Walmart’s Board of Directors and a managing partner for the Walton family’s private equity firm.
- Bekenstein family: Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein and his wife Anita have given a combined $375,000 to WelcomePAC since October 2024.
- Michael Bloomberg: Billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since August 2024. Bloomberg is best known for his controversial mayoralty (which saw the expansion of racist “stop-and-frisk” policing tactics and anti-Muslim surveillance) and his expensive, widely-mocked 2020 presidential campaign.
- James & Kathryn Murdoch: James Murdoch—the estranged younger son of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch—and his wife Kathryn have given a combined $2.5 million to WelcomePAC since April 2024.
- Rob Granieri: Granieri, the co-founder of Wall Street quantitative trading firm Jane Street, has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since June 2024.
- Edward Fishman: Fishman, a managing director at hedge fund D.E. Shaw, has given $200,000 to WelcomePAC since February 2022.
- Mark Heising: Heising, the founder of private equity firm Medley Partners, has given $250,000 to WelcomePAC since June 2024.
- David Nierenberg: Nierenberg, an investment manager and former national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and his wife Patricia have given a combined $726,600 to WelcomePAC since March 2024.
- Americans Together Inc: Americans Together Inc, a centrist group founded by former Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) daughter Heather Manchin Bresch, has given over $1 million to WelcomePAC since February 2024. A core plank of Americans Together’s policy platform is opposing any repeal or reform of the Senate filibuster (the goal, ironically, of a 2021 book by WelcomeFest speaker Adam Jentleson).
- Bresch, the former CEO of pharma company Mylan, attracted national attention in 2016 for defending Mylan’s EpiPen price-gouging.
Who’s Actually Welcome to the Party?
While WelcomePAC’s donor roster makes clear who the group wants to welcome into the Democratic tent, its website is quite explicit about who they wish to exclude. WelcomePAC blames the Democratic Party’s woes on an “extreme right and socialist left […] conspiring with conflict-driven media to trash the Democratic brand.” In a poorly-aged 2021 Substack post calling for a “Jim Clyburn Day,” Welcome co-founder Lauren Harper celebrated Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement of Biden for “steering the party away from further polarization that would have led to a second Trump term.”
WelcomeFest organizers have explicitly juxtaposed their event with the purportedly left-wing Democratic National Committee, offering a refuge to those put off by the Democratic Party’s current leadership. They firmly reject unspecified “progressive purity tests” (read: having values), but lack a compelling explanation for why swing and red state voters are flocking to the progressive-populist fight against oligarchy.
Bafflingly, for a group that promises to offer “a vision for a depolarized United States,” WelcomeFest only features Democrats speaking about the need to moderate. The group, which proudly touts the label of “centrist insurgency,” has seemingly little to offer a polarized Republican Party—which is perhaps why their previous campaign to convince five House Republicans to caucus with Democrats failed so spectacularly. This has hardly hampered their push for moderation at all costs. In pursuit of this end, the group has even invented a metric that claims safe blue congressional seats are undemocratic, encouraging Republican challengers to pursue previously uncontested blue seats.
Some of WelcomePAC’s top staff have also spent their careers working to move the Democratic Party to the right. Co-founder Liam Kerr previously spent 10 years working for Democrats for Education Reform, a charter school advocacy organization founded and funded by hedge fund managers. Welcome Party board member Catharine Bellinger has also spent her career working for the same pro-charter school groups as Kerr. WelcomePAC’s political director, Daniel Conway, spent nearly six years working for No Labels, the centrist dark money group co-founded by the late Joe Lieberman that repeatedly attempted to recruit a third party candidate to run for president in 2024.
Taken together, WelcomePAC’s leadership and funding are at odds with their claimed opposition to the “buttoned-up [politics] of Washington elites.” Like Third Way and the Democratic Leadership Council before it, Welcome is yet another donor- and elite-driven operation seeking to drag the Democratic Party rightward on economic policy. That “rebranded neoliberalism” approach risks further alienating the very constituencies that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024, and ceding further ground to right-wing faux-populists like Vice President JD Vance.
Given the WelcomeFest lineup, it’s clear that the donor class views Abundance as key to carrying out this self-serving crusade against populism.
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Third Way And Its Regressive Politics Should Have No Place in the Democratic Party
The party is very much at a crossroads: It can embrace progressivism and forge a new, compelling identity or it can take cues from the donor and consultant class and embrace the very policies that precipitated our current political crisis.
Mar 05, 2025
Over the weekend, Politico reported that, in early February, a group of Democratic “consultants, campaign staffers, elected officials, and party leaders” had convened in Virginia to chart a course forward for the party. The so-called “Comeback Retreat” was organized by the corporate centrist think tank Third Way and resulted in a summary document highlighting some of the top takeaways from the convening. In a series of bullet points, the authors of the document summarize the ways that, in their view, Democrats can reconnect with working class voters.
The Democratic Party is still reeling from its loss to President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in November, and party leaders are correct in thinking they should adopt a new tack. However, Third Way, and its brand of tried-and-failed Republican-lite politics, should not have any say in the way the Democratic Party reforms itself as it heads into the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential election.
The Comeback Retreat summary focuses on Democrats’ cultural disconnect with working class voters, as well as Democrats’ lack of “economic trust” with voters. The document first points to issues in each category and then offers solutions for rebuilding across both lines. Some of these issues and prescriptions are of the milquetoast variety typically generated by the consultant class. Democrats should “acknowledge [voters’] struggles and speak to real concerns,” advises one point, while elsewhere the document recommends “[improving] Democratic communication and media strategy.” No political strategist would disagree that these are both good practices for any successful campaign.
If Democrats really want to speak to voters’ concerns, they should start by addressing trends that are making life unlivable for so many Americans.
However, situated alongside these poli-sci bromides are some truly reactionary ideas. In the cultural dimension, the document encourages Democrats to “embrace masculinity” and celebrate “traditional American imagery (e.g., farms, main streets).” Apparently, Third Way and its colleagues don’t consider city dwellers to be traditionally American. On the economic side, the document encourages Democrats to stop “demonizing wealth and corporations” and to “avoid an anti-capitalist stance.” The party also, per Third Way, needs to “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate.”
If the party “moves away” from small-dollar donors, that apparently means “moving toward” millionaire, billionaire, and corporate donors.
Finally, the document devotes a fair amount of time to “reduc[ing] far-left influence and infrastructure.” Recommendations include building a pipeline of moderate Democrats to staff the ranks of the party and run for office, banning “far-left” candidate questionnaires, and “push[ing] back” against far-left staffers and groups who, according to Third Way, exert “disproportionate influence” in the party. (I’m pleased, as a member of the so-called “far-left,” to learn that we wield so much power within the party—and expect that our influence on party policy will become visible any day now.)
Taken together, a very clear image emerges of the Democratic Party envisioned by Third Way: It is pro-capitalist, pro-corporate, and preferential to big donors over small ones. It also celebrates masculinity and a traditional America while rejecting “identity-based” concerns. To put it another way, it sounds a lot like the modern GOP right before the MAGA movement took over.
This list of prescriptions—cooked up at a retreat held in the richest county in the U.S., where I seriously doubt there were working class voters present—is a recipe for disaster for the Democratic Party. In 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris ran a campaign that was heavily focused on Republicans disaffected with Trump and aimed at presenting the Democrats as a kinder, gentler GOP, the kind that we might have today if Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney had become the standard-bearer instead of Donald Trump. This strategy backfired catastrophically. Doubling down on it would be pure political malpractice.
The Democratic Party does need to emphasize “shared values,” as the document says. These values, though, include the notion that healthcare is a human right that should be provided by the government, not a privilege. They embrace the idea that the U.S. needs to develop more clean energy sources, not drill for more oil and gas—with renewable energy creating more jobs than drilling. And Americans agree that corporations and the wealthy should be taxed more, not celebrated for their ingenuity in hoarding wealth.
If Democrats really want to speak to voters’ concerns, they should start by addressing trends that are making life unlivable for so many Americans. The affordability crunch caused by corporate greed, the climate crisis, our ever-more-expensive healthcare system, and our flailing democracy all provide the party with openings to take bold, progressive policy stands. However, these stances are completely incompatible with the regressive, triangulating politics that Third Way envisions.
The Democratic Party is very much at a crossroads: It can embrace progressivism and forge a new, compelling identity that speaks directly to voters’ concerns—especially working-class voters. Or it can take cues from the donor and consultant class and embrace the very policies that precipitated our current political crisis. The former approach requires bravery and risk-taking; the latter only asks that the party backslides into its old habits and, quite possibly, political obsolescence.
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No Labels Denounced for 'Dangerous' Dark Money Ploy to Boost Trump in 2024
"Their decision to move forward with a dark-money, Trump donor-funded third-party fantasy bid is shameful and puts millions of Americans at risk," said one opponent.
Mar 08, 2024
With Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden expected to face former GOP President Donald Trump in the November election, No Labels on Friday confirmed it is pushing ahead with plans for a third-party "unity" ticket that critics fear could help the Republican return to the White House.
"The consequences of the next presidential election could not be more serious or more existential, and, despite this, No Labels has put their dangerous, reckless thought experiment ahead of the rights and freedoms of millions of Americans and the future of our democracy," declared MoveOn Political Action executive director Rahna Epting. "Their decision to move forward with a dark-money, Trump donor-funded third-party fantasy bid is shameful and puts millions of Americans at risk."
"Their own founder said they are 'not in it to win it,' and several current and past supporters of No Labels have implored them to stand down. And yet, they have decided to pump millions of dollars of dark money into a run that would swing the election to Donald Trump," she warned. "Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term in the White House."
"Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term."
Epting's comments came after No Labels national convention chair Mike Rawlings said in a statement that "earlier today, I led a discussion with the 800 No Labels delegates from all 50 states. These citizen leaders have spent months discussing with one another the kind of leadership they want to see in the White House in 2024. These are some of the most civic-minded, thoughtful, and patriotic Americans I have ever met. They take their responsibility seriously."
"Even though we met virtually, their emotion and desire to bring this divided nation back together came right through the screen. I wasn't sure exactly where No Labels delegates would land today but they sent an unequivocal message: Keep going," he added. "They voted near unanimously to continue our 2024 project and to move immediately to identify candidates to serve on the unity presidential ticket. Every one of our delegates had their own explanation for wanting to move ahead."
No Labels is a dark money group with secret far-right donors.
It’s not trying to find the so-called “middle ground.”
It’s trying to put Donald Trump back in the White House.
Be warned. pic.twitter.com/5cJgBTFGNj https://t.co/PCluXaWhBQ
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 8, 2024
While Rawlings provided some examples of delegates' statements from the call, so did journalists who obtained recordings of it. The New Republic's Greg Sargent—who got the audio from Matt Bennett, co-founder of the Democratic-centrist group Third Way—reported on concerns about a No Labels candidate being a spoiler for Trump:
For instance, a No Labels leader in Idaho said that while members are all for a run, they believe the ticket should "only" be offered to a candidate who has a "reasonable path to succeed and not be a spoiler." A leader in Iowa said the candidate must be "strong" and have "the ability to win."
Many others echoed these sentiments. At one point a party member from New Hampshire said: "We are in it to win it. But we also don't want to look like liars when we're telling people that we're not going to be a spoiler."
However, participants in the call expressed support for pursuing a unity ticket, according to Politico's Shia Kapos and Daniel Lippman, who also obtained a recording and reported that "delegates compared what No Labels was doing to Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address and the Founding Fathers during the American Revolution."
Third Way's Bennett said in a statement Friday: "What part of 'no' is so hard to understand? Time and again, voters, candidates, and election experts have told No Labels that a third-party presidential ticket can't win and would help Trump."
As Andrew Perez and Nikki McCann Ramírez detailed Friday for Rolling Stone:
Over the past year, the dark-money group has been leading a reported $70 million campaign to secure ballot access nationwide for a potential 2024 "unity" ticket. No Labels has refused to disclose who's funding this effort, claiming that this is to protect its donors from "agitators and partisan operatives." Thanks to a quirk in America's broken system of campaign finance laws, the group will never be required to disclose who funded its ballot access effort—and would only have to start reporting donors if it were to formally back candidates.
So far, No Labels has secured ballot access in 16 states, and is trying to do so in 17 other states. The group has given no concrete hints as to which two divide-spanning politicians might run on its unity ticket, or to what party they might belong.
Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—a right-winger who weighed a run for president—suggested last week that a No Labels ticket would be a spoiler, saying that "right now, if you can't get on 50 states and you're going to basically hit in some of the battleground states that could be very detrimental to what the outcome would be."
During Biden's State of the Union speech on Thursday night, Trump said that it was "interesting" that Manchin and retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah)—the 2012 GOP nominee—were sitting together, "and nobody wants to talk to them."
"I think they'd make a great No Labels team!" added Trump—whose only remaining primary challenger, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, dropped out earlier this week. She has also publicly opposed running with No Labels.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, an Independent who ditched the Democratic Party shortly after the 2022 election, revealed this week that she is not seeking another term in November but she is also "not running for president."
Another potential No Labels candidate, former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, recently resigned from the group's board in frustration and has decided to run for Senate. He remains opposed to both major candidates, saying Thursday that "I'm like 70% of the rest of people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president."
While No Labels searches for candidates, the group's critics continue to warn of the consequences of its potential ticket.
"There is no path to victory for No Labels. They will only ensure a second Trump presidency that serves the interests of their billionaire and corporate special interest backers," End Citizens United president Tiffany Muller said Friday. "It's why they've fought every effort to play by the rules and disclose their donors."
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The Return of Lesser Evilism
With Trump on the other side, Democrats can be lazier than ever this election
Jun 22, 2016
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote a column about Ralph Nader earlier this week using interesting language. Noting that it's now been 16 years since Nader ran for president and garnered enough dissenting votes to help elect George W. Bush, he wrote (emphasis mine):
"That is enough time for Nader to confess his role in enabling one of the most disastrous presidencies in American history, or at least to come up with a better explanation for his decision. Instead, Nader has repeated his same litany of evasions, most recently in an interview with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR, where he dismissed all criticisms of his 2000 campaign as 'fact deprived.'"
Nader refuses to confess! What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Fetch the comfy chair!
It would be foolish to argue that Nader's run in 2000 didn't enable Bush's presidency. Though there were other factors, Nader's presence on the ballot was surely a big one.
But the career Democrats of the Beltway and their buddies in the press have turned the Nader episode into something very like the creation story of the Third Way political movement. And like many religious myths, it's gotten very tiresome.
The Democratic Party leaders have trained their followers to perceive everything in terms of one single end-game equation: If you don't support us, you're supporting Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil Republican Here.
That the monster of the moment, Donald Trump, is a lot more monstrous than usual will likely make this argument an even bigger part of the Democratic Party platform going forward.
It's a sound formula for making ballot-box decisions, but the people who push it never seem content to just use it to win elections. They're continually trying to make an ethical argument out of it, to prove people who defy The Equation are, whether they know it or not, morally wrong and in league with the other side.
Beltway Democrats seem increasingly to believe that all people who fall within a certain broad range of liberal-ish beliefs owe their votes and their loyalty to the Democratic Party.
That's why, as a socially liberal person who probably likes trees and wouldn't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Nader's decision to take votes from the party-blessed candidate Gore is viewed not as dissent, but as a kind of treason.
The problem with this line of thinking is that there's no end to it. If you think I owe you my vote because I recycle and enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird, you're not going to work very hard to keep it. That's particularly true if the only standard you think you need to worry about is not being worse than Donald Trump, which is almost the same as no standard at all.
This is why the thinking within the Democratic Party has gotten so flabby over the years. It increasingly seems to rejoice in its voters' lack of real choices, and relies on a political formula that requires little input from anyone outside the Beltway.
It's heavily financed by corporate money, and the overwhelming majority of its voters would never cast a vote for the nut-bar God-and-guns version of Republicanism that's been their sole opposition for decades.
So the party gets most of its funding without having to beg for it door to door, and it gets many of its votes by default. Except for campaign-trail photo ops, mainstream Democrats barely need to leave Washington to stay in business.
Still, the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Democrats have come to believe they've earned their status, by being the only plausible bulwark against the Republican menace.
This sounds believable because party officials and pundits like Chait keep describing critics of the party as far-leftists and extremists, whose platform couldn't win a national election.
Dissenting voices like this year's version of Nader, Bernie Sanders, are inevitably pitched as quixotic egotists who don't have the guts to do what it takes to win. They're described as just out for 15 minutes of fame, and maybe a few plaudits from teenagers and hippies who'll gush over their far-out idealism.
But that characterization isn't accurate. The primary difference between the Nader/Sanders platform and the Gore/Clinton platform isn't rooted in ideology at all, but money.
The former camp refuses to be funded by the Goldmans and Pfizers of the world, while the latter camp embraces those donors. That's really all this comes down to. There's nothing particularly radical about not taking money from companies you think you might need to regulate someday. And there's nothing particularly centrist or "realistic" about taking that same money.
When I think about the way the Democrats and their friends in the press keep telling me I owe them my vote, situations like the following come to mind. We're in another financial crisis. The CEOs of the ten biggest banks in America, fresh from having wrecked the economy with the latest harebrained bubble scheme, come to the Oval Office begging for a bailout.
In that moment, to whom is my future Democratic president going to listen: those bankers or me?
It's not going to be me, that's for sure. Am I an egotist for being annoyed by that? And how exactly should I take being told on top of that that I still owe this party my vote, and that I should keep my mouth shut about my irritation if I don't want to be called a Republican-enabler?
The collapse of the Republican Party and its takeover by the nativist Trump wing poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which being the high likelihood that the Democrats will now get even lazier when it comes to responding to their voters' interests. The crazier the Republicans get, the more reflexive will be the arguments that we can't afford any criticism of Democrats anymore, lest we invite in the Fourth Reich.
I didn't vote for Nader in 2000, and I don't have a problem with anyone arguing this coming Election Day that we shouldn't all do whatever we can to keep Donald Trump out of office.
What's problematic is the way Beltway media types are forever turning postmortems on the candidacies of people like Nader or Sanders into parables about the perils of voting your conscience when what we're really talking about is the party's unwillingness to untether itself from easy money. This is how Chait sums up Nader (again, emphasis mine):
"Nader goes on to defend his idiosyncratic belief that people are under no obligation to consider real-world impacts in their voting behavior. Vote for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate, follow your own conscience: 'I think voters in a democracy should vote for anybody they want, including write in or even themselves. I don't believe in any kind of reprimand of voters who stray from the two-party tyranny.'
"Why should people vote for candidates at all? Since, by definition, the person we most closely agree with is ourselves, why not just write your own name in every time?"
Ugh. Hey, Jonathan: Voters don't want candidates who agree with them about everything. They just want one who isn't going to completely take them for granted. If that's become too much to ask, maybe there's something wrong with the Democratic Party, not people like Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders.
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Do Americans Really Want Hillary Clinton's 'Vital Center'?
Nov 25, 2014
Hillary Clinton invoked what she called the "vital center" in a speech before the New York Historical Society this past weekend as the place where most Americans want their politicians to be.
But public opinion right now is actually tilted fairly leftward, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll also released this weekend.
"I think our country kind of moves in pendulum swings," she was quoted as saying in an MSNBC story. "We go maybe a little bit too far in one way, and then we swing back. We are most comfortable when he have that balance in the vital center. And we are, I think, in need of getting back to that."
The agenda that had majority support in this latest poll of 1,000 adults would not be considered "centrist" by the people Clinton was addressing in the Historical Society gala in New York City's posh Mandarin Oriental hotel, where MSNBC reports "guests dined on baby mizuna and seared beef tenderloin in a cabernet sauvignon reduction."
One of the questions in the NBC/WSJ poll asked people if they supported particular actions that the next Congress could take. The highest ranking actions, and the percentage of people who either "strongly support" or "mildly support" the action, included:
* Providing access to lower cost student loans and providing more time to those who are paying off their student loan debt (82 percent, with 64 percent "strongly" supporting).
* "Increasing spending on infrastructure projects for our roads and highways" (75 percent).
* "Raising the minimum wage" (65 percent).
* "Addressing climate change and global warming by setting specific targets to limit carbon emissions" (59 percent).
Each of those priorities have been obstructed by Republicans in Congress since 2010, and are expected to be strongly opposed by the larger Republican majorities in the next Congress.
Meanwhile, key items in the agenda favored by Republicans and centrist Democrats don't fare so well:
* "Eliminating most tax deductions in return for lower tax rates" gets a "meh" response, with 49 percent approving.
* So did "reducing Medicare and Social Security benefits for wealthier retirees," moving these programs away from their origins as social insurance programs. That only got 44 percent support.
* "Making new trade agreements with selected Asian nations" - such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership - also only got 44 percent support.
* "Lowering the corporate tax rate by eliminating many business tax deductions" only got 43 percent support.
* Gradually raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 received a strongly negative response: 34 percent supported while 51 percent opposed, 38 percent "strongly."
Fifty-two percent of the poll respondents said that "government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people," compared to 46 percent who embraced the view that "government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."
But an even larger percentage of poll respondents (56 percent) said they believed that "the economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me."
That looks like an electorate that would be more receptive to a Sen. Elizabeth Warren-style populism - one that identifies and goes after the conservative-corporate nexus that is responsible for the stacked deck - than either the pro-corporate, anti-government agenda of congressional leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, or the conservative-lite stylings of the Peter G. Peterson and Third Way crowds.
To be fair, Clinton at that same speech acknowledged that there is an anger among "people whose incomes have not rebounded from the Great Recession" and who need policies that will restore "broad-based prosperity." But in responding Clinton preached caution; in the words of MSNBC writer Alex Seitz-Wald, "Clinton rejects the radicals, stakes out the center, and talks about inequality in a way that won't alienate this well-heeled crowd."
But a broad majority of the American public, as we've chronicled on our Populist Majority website, is not looking for the kind of caution that would spare the well-heeled discomfort. A populace for whom, as Richard Eskow wrote recently, "key elements of the American dream--a living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for one's children to get ahead in life--are increasingly unreachable," is at the end of its rope. For those of us in that group, watered-down populism that soothes those who have the luxury of dining on baby mizuna - or even knowing what it is - won't cut it.
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