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Centrist Democrats Are Rolling Up Their Sleeves and Punching Left

The Third Way think tank is pouring millions of dollars into combatting not the GOP but the DSA.

Matt Bennett, Jonathan Cowan, and Jim Kessler, three of the five cofounders of Third Way.

In the wake of Abdul El-Sayed’s insurgent victory in Michigan’s US Senate primary last week, the Democratic Party rallied to support its newly designated nominee in a striking show of unity, despite a singularly bitter and expensive establishment crusade to secure his defeat. El-Sayed’s chief rival for the nomination, Representative Haley Stevens, delivered a swift and gracious concession statement, and a clutch of big-name aspirants to the 2028 presidential descended on Detroit for an El-Sayed kickoff rally, further driving home the party’s determination to stand behind its nominee in the race to win a swing-state seat pivotal to its hopes for a Senate majority this November.

There was one countermovement seeking to squelch all this post-primary Kumbaya momentum, though: the centrist advocacy group Third Way, which seized on the victory of El-Sayed and two other left insurgent House candidates in the Michigan balloting to announce a new $15 million campaign to discredit democratic socialism in this midterm cycle and the 2028 national election. In touting this effort to New York Times political correspondent Shane Goldmacher, Third Way president Jonathan Cowan claimed that the group wouldn’t be targeting individual candidates but rather the Democratic Socialists of America, which he deemed “a mortal danger” to the Democratic Party, thanks to its hard-left positions on issues such as the Gaza war, crime and justice, and the top-heavy American political economy. Cowan also wasted little time in undermining his own above-the-fray messaging by citing the Michigan primary results as a call to centrist arms: “It is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states.” As Goldmacher writes, the new Third Way campaign will “include opposition research into D.S.A., polling, social media programs and educating Democratic activists and leaders. It would target both proud democratic socialists and those such as Dr. El-Sayed, whom he derided as performing the ‘D.S.A. dodge’—flirting with democratic socialists enough to get their organizing manpower and support while remaining distant enough to avoid the explicit label.”

It’s a novel strategy, to put things mildly, for a putatively Democratic think tank........

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