Truth Out has the article The DLC Lives: “Third Way” Democrats Are Trying to Push the Party Rightward.

I think the main value of this article is to arm you against the attack of the Democratic Party oligarchs who will try to convince you to support them against your own best interests.

I may be on the hairy edge of the principle of fair use in the excerpts I show below. The irony of that is the fact that there is so much more of the article that I wanted to quote. I guess, you’ll just have to read the article for yourself.

The basic premise: Democrats are wrong to appeal to growing demographics that lean liberal, such as Latinos and young people. Third Way claims that this thinking has led Democrats to “pursue a base-only strategy without worrying about persuading a broader swath of voters to support them.” Democrats are failing to acknowledge, it argues, that voters are increasingly registering as independents and do not identify as liberal. It declares that the party must move to the center.
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However, the more persuasive argument is that the Democrats lost the election precisely because they are too much like what Third Way wants them to be: deferential, non-ideological and too close to Wall Street. “Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment,” Sen. Bernie Sanders explained during the primary.
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Third Way’s rhetoric repeatedly conflates “independent” with “moderate.” This conflation is repeated frequently in the media as a truism. And while the specific politics of “independent voters” vary widely and change from election to election, pollsters agree that “it’s critical not to confuse ‘independents’ with ‘moderates,'” as 538 acknowledged in an article about Bernie Sanders’ success among independents.

The reality that “independent” does not equal “moderate” has been affirmed by many other pollsters and experts, including Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling and even the DLC’s still surviving sister think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, which acknowledged as much in 2010.

“One of the frustrating things about contemporary political analysis is the frequency with which key terms get used in a very sloppy manner that reflects highly biased or inaccurate assumptions,” the Progressive Policy Institute stated in a 2010 article on its website. “A perpetual example is the use of ‘independent’ and ‘moderate’ as interchangeable words for unaffiliated voters.”