TPM: Third Way Co-Founder Explains Op-Ed Criticizing Warren (and makes it worse)

[flpoljunkie]

The Third Way--the DLC dressed up with a new name, but with apparently the same old Wall Street, deficit obsessed agenda.

Third Way Co-Founder Explains Op-Ed Criticizing Warren

CAITLIN MACNEAL – DECEMBER 8, 2013, 4:33 PM EST723

Third Way Co-Founder Jim Kessler on Friday explained the group's Monday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing a plan backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to expand Social Security.

"That Social Security plan was the final moment for us," he said in an interview on Sirius XM with Ari Rabin-Havt, as recorded by the Huffington Post. "That Social Security plan had been out there but really languishing -- because Senator Warren has such a powerful compelling voice, she started talking about it, and it suddenly it became much more talked about and viable alternative."

Kessler said that the op-ed was not meant as a personal attack on Warren, but that she gave a popular voice to a plan that concerns Third way.

"She is a very compelling elected official and national figure," he said. "Her involvement in that particular bill, we just looked at it and said 'okay, this seems to be starting to get out of hand.'"

The group's op-ed incited a negative response from progressives and Warren herself. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee called on multiple Democrats to cut ties with Third Way, and Warren said the group was "flatly wrong" about its belief that Social security is insolvent.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/third-way-co-founder-explains-op-ed-criticizing-warren

[NYC_SKP]

1. "'okay, this seems to be starting to get out of hand.'" Fuck Third Way.

Warren in 2016...

[Voice for Peace]

4. and, help me remember, did they disclose their donors?

[freshwest]

9. Don't know about now, but they were supposed to have closed their doors when the Koch $s dried up.

No, don't have a link, but it's been discussed here on DU.

The so-called Third Way (until Tony Blair showed what they were all about - privatization with slick words and pretty faces - and of course, Iraq) at one time seemed necessary to break the GOP juggernaut.

That being their input and then control of the Seven Mountains which Cruz daddy so kindly brought to notice this year, when they are well neigh impossible to resist.

After 12 years of Reaganism (I count Bush daddy as the last three years of that) Democrats were scrambling for a place in a media environment that was weighted against them.

At the time, Clinton looked better than another 4 years of Reagan. He was seen as a man who had dealt with the conservatives in a state that had once been Democratic but was slipping to rightwing religiosity. It's tumbled into the ditch now, it'll be very hard to get to the infection of Teabaggery and bigotry out.

I'm thinking this is a media event being played out to get people to accept Hillary. To make her seem more liberal than she was seen before.

IDK...

[Voice for Peace]

11. my brain's all fuddled but didn't Sen. Warren request they voluntarily disclose

who on Wall Street was funding them?

[freshwest]

13. Not sure, time to google the DU... be back.

With One Speech Elizabeth Warren TERRIFIES The Koch Brothers and The Supreme Court

More at Segami's thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023631191

DLC = Koch Bros?!?

Pros and cons and LOTS of links at unionworks' thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/100278867

Of course they also fund PBS. When you have those kinds of $s, you can afford to play both sides against each other. Who would have imagined that the eternal anti-establishmentarian Infowars was a Bircher front group, which was funded by the Koches?

Or the alleged indenpendent Tea Party claimed to be and still does claim it is, is a fully owned and operated subsidiary of the same cabal, under a dozen different names?.

I could go on, sure you know the story. Found this for you:



Posted by Old and In the Way:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024138607#post7

Be sure to check out the rest of the thread this came from:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024138607

I can't find Warren's demand on disclosure, maybe someone can, but she asked it of the Senate or was it a rightwing think tank...

Interesting discussion of the DLC as a problem for Democrats, or maybe not:

DLC - Corporate Moles Destroying Our Party

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2434753

I would like to say that their time is past and they are no longer needed. But with Citizens United and the Koch brothers and other cranky conservatives' billions, Obama made a PAC this last year - to compete.

Purity is a luxury millions whose lives have been saved by half measures can't afford to indulge themselves. It's a hard fact.

Compromises will be made, just make them the right way and get out to change the Congress and state houses - or ALEC will undo us from the ground up as they have grass roots support as well as national business interest support.

Sorry I could not find the EW quote. Post it if you find it as it would be a nice retort to them.

[Voice for Peace]

14. lazy me... I think I got it backwards.. she was asking Wall Street to disclose.

but why not ask 3rd Vay?

[freshwest]

15. I googled and gave you some information. On asking the previously reported 'defunct' DLC?

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was a non-profit 501(c)(4) corporation[1] founded in 1985 that, upon its formation, argued the United States Democratic Party should shift away from the leftward turn it took in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The DLC hailed President Bill Clinton as proof of the viability of Third Way politicians and as a DLC success story.

The DLC's affiliated think tank is the Progressive Policy Institute. Democrats who adhere to the DLC's philosophy often call themselves New Democrats. This term is also used by other groups who have similar views on where the party should go in the future, like NDN[2] and Third Way.[3]

On February 7, 2011, Politico reported that the DLC would dissolve, and would do so as early as the following week.[4] On July 5 of that year, DLC founder Al From announced in a statement on the organization's website that the historical records of the DLC have been purchased by the Clinton Foundation.[5] The DLC's last chairman was former Representative Harold Ford of Tennessee, and its vice chair was Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware. Its CEO was Bruce Reed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council

No one to ask, apparently, as they gave up the ghost prior to the 2012 election. That's why I've usually given short shrift to outrage about them ever since. The Third Way ghost lives on at DU, but not in the real world, I guess...

[Voice for Peace]

16. Thanks! It seems not only on DU.

[freshwest]

17. True. Bogeyman live forever... n/t

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. She's all uppity.

And I love it.

[polichick]

21. Yeah, anything that threatens their ability to whore for corporations is "out of hand."

[djean111]

2. Fuck the Third Way indeed.

If there is any doubt as to who is really running the (former) Democratic Party.....

[Scuba]

10. +1,723

[freshwest]

3. "I knew I should taken that left toin at Al-ba-koi-kee."

[A Simple Game]

6. There you go. If in doubt, always turn left. n/t

[Pakid]

7. As if the Third Ways plan is popular

after all who wants to get screwed for the rich. You have to wonder just what kind of people would screw millions of other people out of there SS in order to keep the rich from paying there share. The rich have gotten one break after another and it is never enough they paid a tax rate between 70-80% at one time and still lived high on the hog they now pay less than us and it still not low enough. Screw them lets take it all and put the useless rich out on the street before they do it to us!

[jtuck004]

8. "You have to wonder just what kind of people would screw millions of other people out of there SS...

...in order to keep the rich from paying there share"

The same ones who today are supporting the wealthy at the expense of the working people and the most vulnerable children and elderly, the ones currently holding office...regardless of party.

[QuestForSense]

12. I have to say, these Quislings irritate me more than any teabagger.

They profess to be democrats, but they are wolves in sheep's clothing. Not meant as a personal attack on Warren? Please.

[rhett o rick]

18. We need to know which politicians The Third Way sponsors. nm

[NorthCarolina]

19. Here's some for you (but not all of course)

Congress Persons: James Clyburn, John Dingell, Ron Kind, Joseph Crowley, Allyson Schwartz, Jared Polis

Senators: Thomas Carper, Claire McCaskill, Mark Udall, Jeanne Shaheen, Kay Hagan, Chris Coons

Emeritus: Gabrielle Giffords (Former Member of Congress), Kathleen Sebelius (Sec. HHS), Ken Salazar (Fmr. Interior Sec.), Jane Harman (Former Member of Congress), Ellen Tauscher (Special Envoy for Strategic Stability and Missile Defense), Evan Bayh (Fmr. Senator), Melissa Bean (Former member of Congress), Blanche Lambert Lincoln, Mark Pryor (Senator).

Of course, you probably already know you can include Bill & Hillary Clinton, Obama, Ed Rendell.

Board of Trustees:

John L. Vogelstein, Chairman
Bernard L. Schwartz, Chairman Emeritus
David Heller, Vice-Chairman
Georgette Bennett
William D. Budinger
David A. Coulter
Jonathan Cowan
Lewis Cullman
William M. Daley
John Dyson

Robert Dyson
Andrew Feldstein
Brian Frank
Michael B. Goldberg
Peter A. Joseph
Derek Kaufman
Derek Kirkland
Ronald A. Klain
Peter B. Lewis
Thurgood Marshall, Jr.

Susan McCue
Herbert Miller
Michael Novogratz
Andrew Parmentier
Kirk Radke
Howard Rossman
Ted Trimpa
Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein
Joseph Zimlich

[rhett o rick]

20. Thank you. What is your source? I have been to their website but

didnt see all those names.

[SunSeeker]

22. Click "About Us" at top of page then click "Board of Trustees" from the menu.

What they don't list is who their donors are. But I just heard Kessler interviewed today and he admits most of their donors are banks in a "so what, everyone knows that" tone.

[NorthCarolina]

23. I should have included the link

but I was on my way out of the house as I wrote that post and guess I just forgot.

Sorry about that.

Here you go: http://www.thirdway.org/co_chairs

[dhpgetsit]

24. From 2002 but still entirely appropriate:

"What's really wrong, though, are these indictments of populism. The DLCers have got political history backward. The original populists were not out to destroy capitalism but to preserve it."

"But there was a defining populist worldview that has influenced Democrats from Bryan in 1896 to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 to Clinton and Gore in 1992. At the heart of this worldview was what the populists called "producerism." The Jacksonians, and later the populists, distinguished those who actually produced wealth from those who lived off of it -- "the idle holders of idle capital," as Bryan referred to them in his "Cross of Gold" speech. Populists believed that wealth and power should accrue to those who produced it -- "the people," properly so-called -- and not to those who lived off the people's labor."

"Such a distinction may sound Marxist, but the populists were neither Marxists nor socialists. They counted the craftsman and the businessman as members of the producing classes, but not the speculator or the absentee landlord. Many populists owned their own farms, and they saw an alliance with labor as an alliance between "capital and labor." "Capital and labor should be allies and not enemies," the Farmers Alliance, the founding populist organization, declared in 1885."

Why Democrats must be populists

I believe there is plenty of support for a true populist candidate.