Third Way, in five-dimensional gibberish

I've already had two partial posts eaten this morning by techno-goblins in the process of saving them, which somewhat demoralizes my attempt at a third. But I'm a dreadful optimist, and at any rate the intended post was rather short, so perhaps I can yet squeeze this through.

I only wished to feature Third Way co-founder Jim Kessler's radio-interview defense of his organization's recent assault on Elizabeth Warren--in a now-infamous WSJ op-ed--a defense which brilliantly invoked Sarah Palin's wordhash-slinging and Gabby Johnson's authentic frontier gibberish:

The impetus was really--we saw after the most recently, this push that okay, it's time to really move the national Democratic Party to a much more liberal agenda, in this case, Senator Warren was the standard bearer--she's on the cover of a lot of magazines. We were a bit alarmed by that.

Even more alarming, however, is economist William Black's recitation (from a year ago) of Third Way's board of trustees. It's so densely populated by Pete Peterson Fix the Debt financial advisory private equity investment banking types, one marvels at the organization's tireless insistence that it's a "think tank" voice of "pragmatic progressivism."

Were Third Way simply honest in declaring itself a voice of quasi-Republican, very conservative Democratic hackery, one could muster some respect for it--for the honesty, that is. Third Way's pretensions of speaking for genuine "American liberalism," on the other hand, are simply insulting.

 

Comments

[Janicket]

Yet another tentacle of the oligarchy's octopus of control over accepted wisdom in this country.

[Grung_e_Gene]

Third-Way is just a rebranding of the Pro-Business Democrats. A group whose allegiance is to Wall Street and the Rich, who caucus and ally with Republicans.

Those are the ones working to steal Social Security and who believe Capital is for the Capitalists and Poverty is for the Poor.

[Peter G]

Of course, one might ask, what possible use an anti-business Democrat might be and where in the US could such a useless creature be elected? I have often wondered at this. How on earth, in a geographically elected representative democracy could one hope to get elected on a platform of wanting to oppose the local business interests from which local jobs and wealth are derived? It seems to be an article of faith on the left at any rate that if you just put CEOs in jail then you won't need oil or coal or what have you. They, the evil oligarchs, are making you use this stuff. It's just weird.