Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

Third Way leaders are extremely sensitive to questions and criticism about their sources of funding. The real issue, Third Way says, is that harsh populist positions and rhetoric are damaging the Democratic Party.

“It goes back to what Bill Clinton said, which is ‘You can’t love the job and hate the job creators,’ ” said Matt Bennett, Third Way’s vice president for public affairs and one of its cofounders. “Vilification of industry isn’t helping Democrats.”

...“We are centrist Democrats, not centrists,” Cowan said.

...Third Way’s insistence on linking tax hikes to a grand bargain — which has been impossible to obtain in the Obama era — has a direct bearing on the wallets of the group’s wealthy funders.

Third Way denies that its wealthy donors give money only because the organization is against stand-alone tax hikes on the rich. Rather, its leaders say it is a political blunder for Democrats to wage class warfare on the 1 percent. It publicly issued a memo in July that said the group’s polling suggested a better message to appeal to America’s middle class: “economic growth and opportunity.”

...The group also had some suggestions about the bank bailout that has fueled so much of the anger at Wall Street for the past six years: Don’t call it a bailout.

“This is an emergency line of credit,’’ Third Way executives wrote in September 2008, as anger was reaching a ferocious pitch. “Banks need this loan so they can loan to you — the American consumer.’’

To some of Wall Street’s harshest critics, such talking points — which could have easily come from a public relations shop in Lower Manhattan — undercut the group’s entire mission....