Philadelphia
Third Way, a leading centrist think tank in Washington (though it’s largely aligned with the Democrats), probably didn’t plan for its event space in Philadelphia to sit a mere block from the downtown square where die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters decided to mount their furious last stand. Outside, in sweltering 100-degree heat, a couple of hundred Sanders supporters of various ages, colors, and states of undress, chanted “Bernie or Bust!” “Bernie or Bust!” “Bernie or Bust!” on Tuesday afternoon. Some 100 feet away, meanwhile, in a handsome event space at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, a couple of dozen formally dressed “wonks” sipped Perrier and nibbled on sandwiches while a Third Way-sponsored panel discussed energy policy.
The topic of the discussion may have been energy, but Third Way seems to be lacking it these days. That may be because the various dignitaries assembled at the luncheon—former senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and current senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Tom Carper of Delaware, to name a few—are emblematic of a fading centrist strain within the Democratic party. The think tank was founded in 2005, before the Democrats began their profound lurch to the left. Sure, Third Way can still put on a nice lunch, but it’s an increasingly awkward guest at what seems more and more like Bernie Sanders’s party.
Consider the content of the discussion. The panelists uttered heresies that would’ve undoubtedly earned boos had they been delivered from the dais of the Wells Fargo Center, a few miles south of here. Carper had warm words for nuclear power. Heitkamp, for her part, who hails from an energy powerhouse, was even more out of step. She sang the praises of “clean coal,” asserted that “energy [policy] has to be broader than just renewables,” and proudly claimed that she’s “big on nuclear.”
The Democratic party, on the other hand, has gone a different way than Third Way. Bernie Sanders opposes fracking—this despite the fact that the fracking-spurred natural gas boom has enabled myriad power plants to switch away from coal, greatly reducing carbon emissions. Clinton now speaks negatively of fracking, too. And the official Democratic party platform only says that it wants to allow local communities and states to block fracking projects, and fails to mention any benefits that this momentous technological development has wrought, including for the environment. The platform also ignores nuclear.
Josh Freed, the vice president of Third Way’s clean energy program who chaired the panel, remains a panglossian optimist. He points to bipartisan efforts in Congress and disregards the platform’s partisan language. “The platform is a statement of politics,” he tells me. “That’s where it begins and where it ends.”
That’s not to say that Third Way would be better off glomming on to Donald Trump’s Republican party, of course. Trump’s stance on energy and climate, for example—he has said that global warming is a “hoax”—would hardly endear him to these civic minded centrists. Perhaps we’d better enjoy those sandwiches while we still can.
