David Dayen: Third Way Misleads Hard in a Weak Effort to Discredit Social Security Expansion

Third Way, the self-appointed sentries holding back the barbarians of progressivism from the gates of the Democratic Party, issued a new paper three days before the Iowa caucus, with the novel suggestion that Bernie Sanders’ proposal to expand Social Security – the consensus position among the party rank-and-file and a strong majority of the Congressional Democratic caucus – is “not progressive,” because more of its expanded benefits pass on to the rich.

This new tactic among Rubinite Democrats (Third Way’s funders include hedge fund managers Dan Loeb and Derek Kaufman, and their board features dozens of investment bankers and CEOs) seeks to capitalize on the Democratic base’s passions about the flow of economic growth upward to the 1%. And it will probably fool a few folks in the interim. But nobody is a more dishonest broker for that message than Third Way. Plus, the claim isn’t only ham-handed and ahistorical, it’s factually inaccurate.