At a demonstration [Wednesday] outside the think tank’s downtown DC office, Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett conceded to Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) co-founder Adam Green that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. [...] Bennett explained to Green that the majority of donors to his group “write us personal checks,” so much of the Wall Street money to Third Way comes from individuals, not institutions. To be sure, Third Way also counts on other corporate donors. As we’ve reported, many companies maintain ties to Third Way, which was formed as a bulwark against economic progressivism within the Democratic Party, to advance their interests in Washington. For instance, both Qualcomm and Humana list their donations to Third Way as part of each company’s lobbying budget.

Third Way insists that while maybe they get an awful lot of money from individuals who are CEOs of Wall Street banks and big businesses, that totally isn't the same thing as being funded by Wall Street. Really. See? They're not controlled by Wall Street. Just by the people who run Wall Street. That's totally different. Because everyone knows that the CEOs of the nation's biggest financial institutions are going to write checks to policy organizations because they believe in their work, not to fund "research" that promotes policies that benefit their companies. Right?

This is the continued aftermath of Third Way's stupidly picking a self-destructive fight with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Instead of recruiting Democrats to the idea that economic populism is a political dead-end, Third Way has been forced to defend themselves against the perception that they are a Wall Street-controlled think tank, based on the fact that their board of trustees is composed almost entirely of Wall Street CEOs. They're losing.