There is a strain of thinking about Democratic politics that goes like this: At a moment of fury and frustration across the country, voters want fierce, populist, anti-establishment fighters who can channel the public’s anger into action.
That may not be exactly what you think of when you imagine the standard centrist politician.
But some Democrats — already gaming out how to regain power in the 2028 presidential election — have other theories about how to win. And they insist that moderate does not need to mean milquetoast.
“21st-century moderates aren’t tepid, timid throwbacks,” declared Jon Cowan, president of the advocacy group and think tank Third Way, as he kicked off a Democratic strategy summit, called “Winning the Middle,” in Charleston, S.C. yesterday. Instead, he said, moderates today are “combative, democracy-defending, swing-vote-winning, big-idea-generating,” get-things-done centrists.
Third Way has expansive — and expensive — ambitions to shape the 2028 presidential campaign, including with events like this one, which drew political strategists, local elected officials from battleground states and advisers to prominent national Democrats.
I sat down with Cowan on the sidelines of the gathering, held at a historic hotel in downtown Charleston known for its She-Crab soup, to hear about an effort that he estimated could cost between $30 million and $50 million between now and 2028.
Below are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversation:
Katie Glueck: Third Way is planning on taking a pretty muscular approach to 2028, right?
Jon Cowan: Third Way is going to lead the effort in 2028 to help nominate someone who is more moderate and mainstream and defeat someone from the far left.
We think that is the only way you beat whoever comes after Trump. And parties are ultimately defined and reoriented around their presidential nominees and their presidents.
Can you preview for our readers what that could look like?
What it means, ultimately, is influencing all of the people who will run for president who are anywhere from the kind of mushy to more moderate. Not the lefties, but everybody else.
Influencing them, and all the concentric circles around them. Not just their teams and their operatives, but all the key people in the early primary and presidential battleground states. People in media, on social media, etc. Creating a highly persuasive case that we market very widely throughout the Democratic Party, not just in Washington but around the country, so that people believe there is one way to win in ’28, and that is by nominating somebody who can win over that middle, and rejecting anybody from the far left.
What that will involve is a large amount of public opinion research that makes our case, extensive convenings like this, a lot of work behind the scenes with all of the campaigns and their circles.
We have built out a very extensive database that tracks everybody who might run for president who’s remotely in this space — none of the far-lefters, but everybody else — and all the circles around them. Their staff, their advisers, their funders, the key people who they know in their friends-and-family networks. We probably have the only database like that, of anybody in Democratic politics.
Can I see it?
You cannot.
We will have a database of all of the campaigns and their huge networks around them, and then [another database of] all of the people that really matter in these early primary and battleground states. And we will be systematically making our case for years to these folks.
Another example: We’re running a series in New York in which we bring about 50 top-dollar donors together, and we give the candidates a chance to come and speak and spend an hour with those donors.
We are running a very large-scale, intensive campaign that has all of these different elements, so that by the time we get to the convention, we have succeeded.
How do you define lefty versus moderate?
Some of it is on policy. If you are for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, open borders, you’re a lefty. And those things will really haunt you in a general election.
Who do you appeal to? What’s your brand and approach in politics? Are you more pragmatic? Do you have an unabashed love of the country? [Or] are you kind of hypercritical of America? Are you willing to pick a range of fights, not just the fights that are really safe and convenient? What’s your track record, also, with winning over swing voters?
Who stands out to you so far as most willing to lean in on tough fights?
Josh Shapiro has had some pretty significant fights. Shapiro has been willing to take on the teachers’ unions in specific instances. Gavin Newsom is trying to defeat the billionaire’s tax. That’s a huge fight inside the Democratic Party, and that’s actually pretty gutsy of him.
Ruben Gallego took some pretty strong stands on immigration. Obviously, Rahm [Emanuel] is the one who’s most unleashed right now. But there’s a range of folks.
Will Third Way endorse in 2028?
We will be the chief opponent of the left in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, and we’ll be working both sides: Make the moderate lane as deep and as wide as possible, and really challenge the lefties. We will not endorse anybody.
This will be the most high-scale, expensive, sophisticated effort like this in the history of the organization.
Can you put a dollar figure on it?
It will be over a three-year period, it will be tens of millions of dollars. We will, in the end, probably spend $30 million to $50 million doing all of what we’re trying to do.
I don’t mean ads. We’re not running ads. I mean all of the operation, all the polling, all the staffing, all the convenings, all of the outreach.
Progressives reading this, do you have anything similar in the works? How about Republicans? I’d love to hear about it — I’m at [email protected].
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ONE LAST THING
From the locker room to the legislature
The upcoming midterm elections have been described as spicy, but now they’re also sporty.
In Texas, Arizona and Minnesota, two former professional athletes and one former N.F.L. reporter have thrown their hats into the ring to run as Republicans, joining a growing number of politicians with flashy backgrounds, my colleague Tim Balk reports.
Hannah Fidelman and Tara Terranova contributed reporting.
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
The post Can These Democrats Make Combative Centrism Happen? appeared first on New York Times.
