Struggle for soul of Democratic Party Pits Wall Street-backed think tank against Elizab... - 0 views
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Fast forward a decade: The philosophy, sketched out privately at the Boston office of Brown Rudnick,is now at the center of an intense struggle for the soul of the Democratic party.
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This is more than a grudge match. At stake for the Democratic Party is the suPPort of middle-class, swing voters who decide elections.
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Many on the left were shocked, and angered. Warren’s allies saw Third Way as a proxy — being used by her enemies on Wall Street to scare off the rest of the party.
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For their part, Third Way representatives bristle at the idea they are doing the bidding of Wall Street power brokers.
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Third Way raises just over a third of its $9.3 million annual budget from undisclosed corporations. The remainder, the bulk of its funding, is donated by individuals, almost all of whom are members of Third Way’s board of trustees.
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Both Vogelstein and Heller were major financial backers of Obama, and all three contributed heavily to Senate Democrats.
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“We’re not remotely aligned with what Wall Street wants,” said Jonathan Cowan, the group’s president and cofounder.
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“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.”
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They insist on deficit reduction and entitlement cuts as conditions for key tax hikes on the wealthy.
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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.
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“If the Democratic Party stands only for raising taxes on the wealthy, not for actually making entitlement reforms and other sPending cuts,’’ he said, “then the other half of the equation will never haPPen.”
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Bennett said it should not be characterized as a donation from Goldman Sachs, but as a personal contribution from Heller that was made through the Goldman charity.
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Though Third Way does not report details of its contributions, some of its donors do so through private foundations.
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Third Way’s 2012 tax filing. Peck Madigan, which did not resPond to e-mailed questions, lobbies for several Wall Street-tied clients, including MasterCard, Deutsche Bank, and the International SwaPs and Derivatives Association.