First way: Republicans who want Republican ideas to win
Second way: Democrats who want progressive ideas to win
Third way: Democrats who want progressive ideas to lose.

?

Have you gone through the pdfs on the Third Way website? I just read a half dozen, and was pleasantly surprised by that admittedly small sample.

A world where the Third Way represented the acceptable political 'center' of the entire political range would be lovely--but, of course, instead of representing the center of the acceptable political range, the Third Way represents the center of the acceptable Democratic range. Not so good.

They are, of course, a third option between the right, who are wrong about everything, and the Dirty Hippie Lefties, who (even in the Strawman Version) have proved prescient in the past few years, about nearly everything. But what if the Third Way wasn't designed to undermine the left, but to reclaim the center? Would that make them more palatable? What, in terms of media and political strategy, is the difference between the two approaches?

I vote that you talk to them, as a service to me! I'd be interested in hearing what you think. From what I read, they'd make a really responsible and respectable conservative party, which this country really needs.

Obviously, Third Way is engaged in Clintonian triangulation policies of the '90s.  It's a center-left organization whose third way is supposed to be an alternative to ideological liberalism and ideological conservatism.  Just read through the press releases on their website and you get a very good sense of where they stand, although Alternet claims that they did some revision to hide earlier support for the war in Iraq.

Here is a Washington Post article on the group.

I bet this paragraph will really raise your eyebrows.

Nancy Jacobson, the wife of Democratic pollster Mark Penn and a Democratic fundraiser, is playing host to the group, which includes several former senior aides in the Clinton White House. Among them are former communications director Don Baer, policy adviser William Galston and Ron Klain, who worked in the counsel's office in addition to serving as chief of staff to former vice president Al Gore.

Jacobson is currently listed as a "senior advisor" to Third Way and you know who Mark Penn is.

This is the basic description.

 In some ways, the new group joins a crowd of like-minded organizations. The best known, the Democratic Leadership Council, was formed after Ronald Reagan's rout of Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale in 1984. That group has since spawned a think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, and spun off a political advocacy group, the New Democrat Network.

Bennett said the new group -- funded, like the others with a mix of donations from individuals and corporate contributions -- will have its niche. The DLC and PPI are aimed at promoting centrist Democratic ideas broadly, through conferences and publications. NDN seeks to influence elections through advertising. Third Way, as its co-founders envision it, will focus on legislative advocacy.

The notion of having Third Way oriented around the Senate was not incidental to its philosophy. Third Way supporters say the House is too partisan and less conducive to the more consensus-oriented brand of politics that the group believes offers the best hope for leading Democrats -- now shut out from power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- out of the electoral wilderness.

In all, I find this group to be typical of the kind of people who would be installed in government posts in another Clinton administration.  That being said, I think it's a mistake to automatically turn down a look at their data.  Even if you have to be cautious in accepting it at face value, it's still worth a look.

You make a good point that centrism in general exists on the presumption that the 'left' and 'right' are two equally legitimate sides of the political spectrum - when in fact the American political dialogue is so tilted to the right that our centrism would be considered, internationally, firmly center-right.

For example, if you were to imagine the centrist position to lie between Bush and Pelosi, it would be a center that lies between the semi-fascist right and the moderate-to-strong left. I mean, Pelosi isn't even a socialist, let alone a radical leftist! But, by international standards, Bush is radically right. Yet he is considered in this country to hold legitimate political views (at least by a good 40-50% of the population).

Any center that recognizes Bush (or Reagan) as holding legitimate political ideologies is not a progressive-friendly center. If that is the Third Way, someone should start working on a Fourth.  

Do you think the Republicans are wrong on every issue, all the time, with no worthy ideas?  If yes, then you probably have about 80% of the American public opposite you.  If no, then you might be a Third Wayer and not even realize it.

The "Third Way" philosophy wise is basically Bill Clinton and Tony Blair's domestic agenda (not that it's based off those, they just happen to fit it). So basically a mushy centrist-type ideology that Chris probably doesn't like. That's when the term first started really entering the lexicon.

This group called the Third Way however... I'm confused about. They were founded much later on in 2004. I have three theories concerning them A) They're using the term Third Way in a differnt context, B) They just stole the term Third Way for name recognition, or perhaps C) They have a different definition of progressive.

I'm pretty sure the thinktank is a progressive body that just happens to also use the same name as the Clinton/Blair domestic ideology.

If that made any sense (it does to me at 3 AM).

, I think, the sociologist Anthony Giddens who was an architect behind the reform of the British labour party.

Giddens, relying on his past familiar themes of reflexivity and system integration, which places people into new relations of trust and dependency with each other and their governments, argues that the political concepts of 'left' and 'right' are now breaking down, as a result of many factors, most centrally the absence of a clear alternative to capitalism and the eclipse of political opportunities based on the social class in favour of those based on lifestyle choices.

In his most recent works Giddens moves away from explaining how things are to the more demanding attempt of advocacy about how they ought to be. In "Beyond Left and Right" (1994) Giddens criticizes the market socialism, and constructs a six point framework for a reconstituted radical politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Gid dens

Giddens, a distinguished sociologist and director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, is described nowadays as Tony Blair's guru or favorite intellectual. In "The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy," he offers a recipe for "social democratic renewal." In so doing, he exemplifies the desperate efforts of leftish intellectuals throughout the Western world during the past decade to vindicate far-reaching interventionism, to "reinvent" the imperious managerial state and defend it against its Thatcherite, Reaganite, and libertarian enemies.

"No one," Giddens recognizes, "any longer has any alternatives to capitalism--the arguments that remain concern how far, and in what ways, capitalism should be governed and regulated" (pp. 43-44). He never seems to doubt, though, that however much the social democrats might govern and regulate the market economy, it will remain "capitalism," and the goose will go on laying the golden eggs without pause.

"Third way politics," Giddens affirms, "advocates a ~new mixed economy" (p. 99, emphasis in original). In the "old" mixed economies, markets were subordinated to the state. "The new mixed economy looks instead for a synergy between public and private sectors, utilizing the dynamism of markets but with the public interest in mind" (pp. 99-100).

http://www.amazon.com/Third-Way-Renewal- Democracy-European/dp/0745622674/ref=pd_ bbs_9/002-2290663-2845619?ie=UTF8&s= books&qid=1179918875&sr=8-9

Given the Democratic collapse on Iraq...

I am an anti-Iraq war progressive.  That said, I have been against the idea of crashing our party on the rocks for this single issue.

Perhaps a "third way" is just another way of describing the reality of politics where the grown-ups who hold office have real institutional responsibilities.  Thomas De Zengotita thinks so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-de- zengotita/house-democrats-cave-on-w_b_49 093.html

Third Way has its roots in a group called Lead or Leave that was formed in the early 1990's and was billed at the time as a Gen X group to promote fiscal discipline & Social Security "reform".  Jon Cowan & Rob Nelson soom bacame media darlings and the group played a role in a few mid-90's elections but burden out within a few years. I believe the current Third Way group was founded only in 2004.

By the way, the W. Post ran a major article on Third Way sometime in 2004 that focused on a big money dinner they had, featuring Bayh, in Georgetown.  I think that was the founding.  Matt Bennett, who had worked press in the Clark Campaign, was also spotlighted.

Have you looked at their Board of Trustees?  It reads as a list of wealthy financiers, elites, and big business types.  This is not your father's (or mother's, in my case) Democratic Party organization.  

You can tell as much about the DLC and Third Way from their board and funders as what you can looking at any other part of them.  

Also, they refer to their projects/papers as "products" and, like the New Dems, their financial supporters make "investments."

The origins of the Third Way come from Britain and Europe. You should read Anthony Giddens if you want a full explanation of the Third Way. To make it quick the Third Way was intended as a way to keep Labor relevant in a world where global communism and socialism had been deemed irrelevant and that capitalism reigned supreme. The Third Way made its move to US through the New Democrats and the relationship that was forged by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Here's Giddens book on the Third Way.

If they offer to meet with you, you should go.  It never hurts to listen, even if you are extremely skeptical.  Besides, you get to meet important people(even if we poo-poo their importance).

I would really love to hear the conversation between you and the political insiders.

Great post.

Chris Bowers,

Why do you and the like-minded get your knickers in a Gordian Knot when it comes to the Third Way?

As such, the Third Way doesn't speak for me, and much less doesn't recognize me as a viable constituent.  Take, for example, I am self-described "aggressive" Moderate, and tend to share much more of a philosophy with the Progressives.

And yet, being that I am from the Sonoran Desert, there is little if any commonality by me with the Third Way.  Again, on another thread, I posted the notional for re-instituting the Military Draft.  And if you have any "cojones", then, the military draft should not be seen as a detriment to America.  If anything, the Third Way, would never consciously recognize that the Military Draft led to the Chicanos, the Native Americans and the African Americans achieving a middle class status since the long slog of World War Two and despite the heavy-handed resistence by Organized Labor and Corporate America for excluding us, the 'racial and ethnics'.

One of our features in the Sonoran Desert is the old adage that "The only thing that changes in America, is its history".  And given the accuracy of this adage, the Third Way is an outfit that is reflective of East Coast politics, and thus, my obvious lack of enthusiasm for such an organization.  Furthermore, they strive to maintain their 'elitism' when the riff-raff like myself and other from this Indigenous Hemisphere, know better, and yet, we will continue to count our votes until we too reach our 'tipping point' for electoral politics.  

But our self-restraint and humility will preclude those of us in the Sonran Desert from establishing a 'newer' and 'better' elitism. :-)

Jaango

It's an easy trap to fall into.
When what we really need to do is to remove the foreign evil-doers/occupiers from our soverign midst and send them to the third world, instead.

(I've morphed into an SNL/Democratic insurgent to ease the Moderate pain!)

the group self-identifies as "progressive." What's going on here?

But, for the deeper history of the term "third way," it goes back to the post-WWII building up of the modern European welfare states.  They represented a "third way" between the failed model of laissez-faire capitalism (the first way) and Soviet-styled Communism (the second way).  Come the 1980s, and Maggie Thatcher represented a return to laissez-faire capitalism.  Come the late 1990s, and Tony Blair represented a capitulation of British Labour to Thatcherism (we can do it better!).  Only, of course, Blair had to pretend he wasn't completely capitulating.  He was, instead, charting a "third way" between the old "third way" and Thatcher's return to the "first way."  That was the rhetoric.  The reality... not so much.

And so it is that the Clinton/Blair "third way" is pretty much the same as the original "first way."

3=1!

Who'd a thunk it?

(The GOP now, of course, has moved on from laissez-faire to neo-Feudalism.  The "zeroth way.")