I checked out the web site and its list of advisers (misspelled -- that should be a clue) and then the list of board members, and then the list of supporters from the House and Senate. I conclude that "Third Way" is a watered-down version of DLC; interesting to wonder why DLC wasn't enough for them.

We can debate policy particulars while making it clear that anyone on our team would be far better than everyone on theirs.

I don't think this is true. A report I saw a while ago (may no longer be true) had the mean wages increasing while the median wages were decreasing. For those not versed in the distinction, it means that more people saw a reduction in wages than saw an increase in wages, but those who saw an increase saw (on average) a larger increase than those who saw a decrease in wages. I.e., the income disparity grew but in such a way that the poor didn't get poorer quite as fast as the rich got richer.

However, a significant number of people's wages did, in fact, increase. Perhaps you were just speaking in hyperbole, but certainly a certain class of people are better off (e.g., stockholders in certain companies) under the Bush administration than under future Democratic administrations. (I'm also under no delusion that a Democratic president in '08 is guaranteed. Heck, depending on the choices, I might not vote for a Democratic president, but I've yet to see the choice that would cause that to happen.)

I also don't think that the group of people who are better off financially under Bush is limited to the top 10%. It's possibly as big as 30-40%. My point is that these are people you can't just write off. There are other reasons why they shouldn't vote for a Bush-like candidate (whether that candidate is Democratic or Republican), and those reasons go beyond just whether or not they personally will be "better off".

I completely misread what you wrote (and I quoted). I've read it again and realized that I (mentally) added a word "off" where there was none. It's amazing how one word can completely change the meaning. Mea culpa.

This is really confusing to me on several levels. Start here:

"The country today is much worse off now on virtually every front than it was when Clinton left office because the government has been in the hands of conservative ideologues. The solution to those problems is getting the conservatives who have supported one failed policy after another out of office. The right is the problem – not Bob Kuttner or any other real or conjured counterpart on the left."

So much of the rhetoric among activists on either side is aimed at how awful the other side is, but Americans are much more likely to respond to actual proposals or ideas for how to fix things than to a litany of complaints about the opposite side.

In other words, leadership involves *doing something*, not demonstrating that what the other side does is awful.

"Even if you think the "Third Way’s" tepid and incoherent policy agenda is a politically safer package than more ambitious proposals, what they and everyone else across the spectrum on the left should be emphasizing is how any Democratic platform would be vastly superior to what the country has been subjected to over the past six years because we all actually believe that government is part of the solution. Continuing to set up the kinds of right-left dichotomies that may have been politically useful in 1992 isn’t doing our side any good. We can debate policy particulars while making it clear that anyone on our team would be far better than everyone on theirs."

Which is it? Are you "retiring" them from your party or having them fall in line behind the liberal base? You realize what they say on sites like The Third Way are their preferred ideas about policy, right? They can't go away and simultaneously argue their views with you about policy.

I see this same attitude occasionally from Markos on DailyKos. He periodically calls for the Democratic Leadership Council to be *eliminated* -- not battled in the marketplace of ideas, but somehow made to disappear.

This whole broad rhetoric is gaining ground in parts of the left. That the organized center doesn't really belong, that they're just Republicans anyway, that you don't need them, etc. To the extent that you take it that far, that you seem to challenge their right to exist and to attempt to organize, I suspect you alienate some people who might otherwise be sympathetic.

I'm an independent who has never belonged to either party, but I voted for the Democrat in all of the last 4 general elections. I'm probably as anti-Bush as any of you, and I'm very uncomfortable and critical of certain figures in my own movement, such as Lieberman and McCain, who I see as inconsistent and fundamentally off-track on the Iraq issue.

Nevertheless, the real center of my views is in organizations like The Third Way or the DLC or the RMSP. I do wonder, when I read these things, if you're showing me the exit door in terms of supporting your party.

Invite The Third Way to go away, and some of us will.

William, I think where you may be misunderstanding me is that I don't want to make the people who support the group "The Third Way" disappear by any means. I'm not wild about their ideas but think they would be far better than what we have had. What I am arguing is that they should stop trying to equate people they disagree with on the left with conservative ideologues. That strategy -- call it triangulation if you want, which used to serve Clinton well -- no longer makes sense because government by conservative ideologues has proven to be so much worse than anything anyone on our side is arguing for. I'm criticizing their strategy of pitting what "some on the left" would do as somehow equally dangerous to what movement conservatism is actually doing. The group "The Third Way" (perhaps renamed) should keep putting out ideas, but using "the third way" as a strategy for calling attention to those ideas should go. Does that clarify things? -- Greg

When there is a threat of real civil unrest in any society (and we are far from that in the US at present) there always arise those who would forestall change by throwing a few crumbs to the masses.

So the danger is that the "centrist" Dems who favor big business and militarism as much as centrist Repubs do will head off efforts by the real left to make fundamental changes to society. Instead of examining the real issues of consumerism in a world running out of raw materials and suffering from overpopulation they elect to tweak a few social programs and defuse unrest before it amounts to something.

Changing the interest on student loans is such an example. So is adding 40 million to health insurance programs instead of eliminating all the useless middlemen and greedy drug patent policies by means of a real national plan.

What is different this time is that mother nature can't be fooled by changes in tax rates and the like. Either we scale back our consumption patterns to a sustainable level or we will face unfixable problems on a global scale. I don't see any of this being addressed by any prominent politicians of any outlook.

They still promise growth as the solution to inequality (backed by a strong military to help insure an adequate supply of raw materials and finished goods). Where are the leaders with real vision?

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Thank you for the clarification. I think that may be a semantic difference, though.

There are those of us who think some ideas on the left are correct and some on the right are correct, while on other issues a middle option best.

For example, I'm someone who thinks the left is correct on social policy (abortion, gay rights, etc.), the right is correct on Social Security reform (private market accounts are a good idea), and the right is broadly correct about trade.

The left was originally correct about Iraq (the decision to go to war), but the middle had the best ideas once the war was started (the Lugar/Biden/Hagel crowd had it right).

Since good ideas are distributed in every part of the spectrum, I kind of have to believe in a "third way" that draws freely from those various elements. If the third way goes away, even in a rhetorical sense, then so do I.

A conservative Democrat with record of balanced state budgets and a perfect NRA rating gets elected to the head of the DNC. Yet because he dislikes Washington insiders and dares to be a partizan Democrat, he gets called 'a joke'. Tell it to the state chairs.

Sorry Mary, this isn't the Town Hall Web site. Your ideas are as laughable as Hugh Huwitts's.

BTW - thanks for Lieberman. I like walking around with a knife in my back all day.

"..the right is correct on Social Security reform (private market accounts are a good idea):" Assuming you mean carve-out accounts, at the risk of hijacking my own thread, please read this in hopes that I might dissuade you. --Greg

If you think privatizing Social Security is viable,
Lugar/Biden/Hagel are going to win the war in Iraq,
and slowly bleeding the country to death in favor of cheap sweatshop goods at Walmart is desirable then all I can say is bye, bye. Those aren't serious positions held by more than a tiny minority in this country and for good reasons.

Ooh, yummy! I can't wait for the GOPers to try to market that bag of poo as "new & improved"

I think you need to separate out "Third Way" ideology from "Third Way" politics. 

In an era of massive Republican unpopularity, it is pretty clear that triangulating between left and right - the essence of Third Way politics - is wholly unnecessary like it was in 1992.  The country has got a good dose of what the GOP has become and that alone will probably be enough to waive the need for any fancy political footwork.  Greg Anrig is probably right that the correct message is that any of our guys are better than any of their guys.

But as a matter of ideology, Third Way-ism is really nothing more than moderation.  And Democrats must always be aware that more people call themselves moderates than call themselves liberal or progressive. 

What's interesting is the shifting definitions of what is moderate and what is liberal.  Just as being an outspoken advocate of gay rights is no longer (for most people) enough to disqualify you as a moderate, so other issues are seeing similar shifts.  I would not be surprised if single-payer health care, for example, exited the realm of the utopian liberal and became the default position among moderate centrists.  Same with the Iraq War.  Calling for troop withdrawals is rapidly becoming mainstream.

I think if Democrats play their cards right, and have the good sense to nominate a strong leader in '08, the differences between moderates and liberals will fade.  As long as the GOP is in power, people will see that what unites the various wings of the Democratic party is far greater than what divides it.  The real test will come when the Democrats assume power.

Re: I also don't think that the group of people who are better off financially under Bush is limited to the top 10%. It's possibly as big as 30-40%.

Maybe. But most of that 30-40% (and I am one of them) are only better off by some trivial margin. My taxes are c. $500 lower than they would have been otherwise. Big whup. And meanwhile I've been laid off two jobs under Bush's tenure, seen my health benefits shrink, and watched the cost of home ownership zoom beyond my reach.

Swann,

There is absolutely no need to change the functioning of Social Security.  The basic fix to the program is to reduce its regressivity by removing the income cap and applying it to unearned income without changing its benefit program.  This would make it healthier than a horse and give it enough money to help out Medicare.

The problem with Social Security is that it has been used to reduce the progressivity of the income tax.  As this effect shifts in the next 20 years, those who have been riding on the effect will now have to reimburse the program and they don't like it.  Changing the program is just a disguised way of ripping off the boomers who paid all those regressive taxes for the last 25 years. 

Missouri Democrats abandoned their rural and small town areas in the state some time ago. It takes time to rebuild in those areas and I can tell you that here in Missouri it is being rebuilt. I know you're an activist, Mary, but not everyone is and it is very, very time-consuming to gather up activists in a long-neglected area.

A second point is there are still Democratic political machines functioning--particularly in the urban areas. It is very difficult for newcomer Democrats who don't have an automatic tie with blood relation/longtime friend/union connections.

Even with these long-standing issues, the GOTV effort by the Democrats here in Missouri resulted in Senator McCaskill's win. The Senator also helped the Democrats by campaigning heavily in the non-urban areas--something Missouri hadn't witnessed in decades as the Democrats had "given up" on those areas and relied heavily on the machine operations in the urban areas. Part was the Senate Committee but part was also Dean's operation--particularly in our rural areas.

I suspect, Mary, you are only communicating with individual activists and not party activists. There's a difference.

In the short run, anything that removes Republicans from power and relegates "conservatism" as it is now constituted to the ash heap of history is a good thing.  I'm willing to overlook ideological differences to remove Republicans from power or keep Democrats in power.

Sadly, many progressives don't feel the same way, which is what I detect in this post from Greg Anrig.  Anyone who writes a post entitled "Third Way Go Away" is probably not interested in overlooking differences for the greater good of defeating Republicans.  From this perpective, the entire campaign against Joe Lieberman was, to my mind, a complete and total waste of time and money.

Perhaps I was being a tad unfair.  But then so are you, given that I don't seem to recall Bill Clinton or Tony Blair, the very personification of Third Way politics, spending a lot of time talking about "bad guys" on the left.  And I would say that your post notwithstanding, the vitriol hurled at groups associated with Third Way politics such as the DLC by the left is way stronger than what they throw back.  Ed Kilgore, this blog's resident DLC expert, spends a great deal of time swatting down one myth after another about that organization.

With your post, I'll accept your explanation.  But I still think phrases like "the “Third Way’s” tepid and incoherent policy agenda" are not exactly designed to foster anti-Republican unity.

Who pays beneficiaries when (not if) the market periodically tanks? Will you be part of an unlucky demographic caught without a chair when the music stops?

The Kolbe-Boyd plan also has a safety net that kicks in should your account fail that amounts to between 80% and 120% of the poverty level, depending on the length of your work history. And it has matching funds for low-income workers that help juice up their accounts and make it less likely, over time, that the account will fail.

The Trust Fund according to the three projections the SSA puts out each year isn't scheduled to go broke until 2041, 2072 or never.

A more meaningful date might be around 2018, when the balance tips from a yearly surplus to a yearly deficit in the trust fund. We will then be making those payments out of the general tax pool and either running higher deficits or raising taxes to pay for it.

I don't pretend that private market accounts solve those problems. They put a lot of stress on the system in the early years, as you're trying to prefund a system that has genuine savings while continuing to "pay-as-you-go" for the baby boomers. It's something that will only be helpful in the long-run, when investments experience cumulative growth over decades.

Basically, I think people will get excited about the new system in, say, 2030 or 2040, when real wealth starts to result from it and when Social Security finances are substantially relieved by it. It's something that will strengthen America down the road, when more Americans can benefit from the markets.

the whole thing can't tank unless treasury bills do

No just up to 30% of Social Security benefits.

If you go the route I suggested, with automatically shifting lifecycle funds, then people will be invested relatively riskier in the early years and more conservatively in the late years.

You've already said that. I say if you dump a lot of money into the market you'll skew the market. You're pumping up stocks and the underlying companies not because they're wise investments but simply because that money has to go somewhere. What companies get government sanctioned investments? The Fortune 500? Is that fair to their competitors? Is that smart? I wouldn't invest in GM on a bet. I won't invest in Exxon or Microsoft on principle. What does it do to other investments like real estate?

The Kolbe-Boyd plan also has a safety net that kicks in should your account fail that amounts to between 80% and 120% of the poverty level, depending on the length of your work history.

Paid for how? Out of general revenues. So just when the economy hits a bad patch the budget takes an unexpected punch too. At least with SS you know ahead of time the amount needed and can plan for what needs to be carved out of the budget. Never mind that your "work history" formulation discriminates against men and women (mostly women) who are out of the job market for any amount of time to raise children.

Yeah we're going to have start cashing in those treasury bonds in about 2018. Good thing George Bush agreed with Al Gore about that lockbox promise back in 2000. I think the rest of the world would breath a sigh of relief if we cut back on our whopping military budget and started paying more attention to our fiscal policy. Here's another solution for that problem. Issue more bonds to refill the Trust Fund as it depletes. That will help if there's another baby boom or we do the right thing and take in 5 million or so homeless Iraqi war refugees in another couple of years.

And of course your solution intially makes things worse, much worse right when we really need the cash to overhaul Medicare and the rest of our healthcare system which is an expensive mess. That's where the crisis will be and where we have to focus. Not some government directed investment program in big business. Ask the Russians how that worked out.

I have a different take on the Third Way paper. As policy, it's not great, but as an opening gambit, it's actually not a bad way of reaching out to libertarians. The longer version of the argument is available at Catallarchy.

I don't think this is necessarily wrong even though Swann's policy proposals are. I spent last fall volunteering for Tammy Duckworth in one of the most expensive house races ever. The Repubs ran their typical negative campaign. Daily mailers and dozens of TV commercials a day on their two pet issues claiming Tammy wanted to give illegal immigrants social security/welfare and tax everybody but the family dog to do it.

The DCCC and Duckworth's campaign returned fire branding Roskam too extreme, even more extreme than the retiring Henry Hyde. Roskam is too extreme but the DCCC's ads were terrible and backfired. As soon as the first one came out the response at front doors was discernable. People who had been enthusiastic about Tammy were turned off. Even though she had no control over the DCCC ad campaign she became just another politician willing to say anything to get elected.

This is what Carville was trying to tell Emanual
that last month. Polling done for Democracy Corp by Stan Greenberg showed people were fed up with
negative cmapaigning and that even bigger gains could be won if Dem candidates went positive. I really believe that would have worked for Tammy.
People in IL-06 were fed up by election day and a lot of them, especially the indys Tammy needed to win stayed home.

When you're trying to change the status quo you need to be positive to get voters to take a chance on the benefits of the new way. When you're trying to protect the status quo you have to be negative to scare people away from making a change. Confusing them, clouding the issues gets you a tie. And ties go to the incumbunt because indy voters will stay home rather than risk making the wrong choice.

William, Unless I missed it, you haven't yet addressed the transition problem, which in its own right pretty much undercuts every rationale for privatizing (the word Cato and Heritage used to use, remember?). --Greg