In the Tanks for the Democrats
Back from the political wilderness, left-leaning thinkers are having their day
Democratic policy wonks just can't seem to publish fast enough these days. Early this year, the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, put out its Agenda for Shared Prosperity, a broad economics blueprint developed by some 50 economists that tackles everything from healthcare to retirement security to trade.
At the urging of Senate Democrats, a team of business leaders last fall developed a plan—the Horizon Project—to bolster America's competitiveness. The centrist Third Way group published a national security strategy titled "Beyond Bush." And the middle-of-the-road Democratic Leadership Council is planning an "Ideas Primary," a series of forums nationwide to hash out policy ideas likely to be debated in the 2008 presidential race.
The Democratic idea world is abuzz. "This is a time for bold and new ideas," says Bob Borosage, codirector of the Campaign for America's Future, a mostly left-wing think tank that opened new offices as a liberal beachhead on K Street, Washington's traditional home to high-priced lobbyists.
Democratic wonks and their wealthy backers are out of the wilderness. With the party back in power on Capitol Hill and an open field of presidential candidates to influence, they're racing to get their ideas out in white papers, newspaper op-eds, and conferences. Some hope for immediate legislation, others for a chance to shape the eventual Democratic nominee's platform. But the window of opportunity may be narrow; it's just a matter of months before the presidential candidates harden their positions and start reducing them to digestible sound bites.
Firepower. For the past six years of the Bush presidency—and some argue for even decades before—progressives have lacked the intellectual firepower to take on the conservative right. "Conservatives kind of dominated from the 1970s through 2000," says John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton and now head of the four-year-old Center for American Progress, one of the best funded of the leftist think tanks.
The right is dominated by well-funded organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, all of which have their own gleaming buildings in Washington; most of the Democratic groups have only their own floors. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, claimed total assets of $159 million in 2005. "The other guys," Podesta says, "fight to win, and we needed someone in the ring with them."
A handful of big-ticket Democratic donors has worked largely under the radar since 2004 to organize the "Democracy Alliance," which is financing progressive groups; it has spent several million dollars so far. "Democrats have become reawakened to the need to get out there and compete in the arena of ideas," says Bernard Schwartz, a longtime Democratic fundraiser and contributor to several progressive think tanks and projects. Leo Hindery, a former CEO of the YES Network and AT&T Broadband, ran the Horizon Project, which developed "medium term" recommendations on trade, education, healthcare, and infrastructure, directed primarily at Congress.
Still, says Simon Rosenberg, a former Clinton hand and staffer at the Democratic National Committee, who now leads the centrist NDN group, "we are grossly mismatched."
advertisement
