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The media’s go-to ‘electability’ experts are funded by Wall St., Amazon, and health insurance giants
As progressive, DSA, and DSA-adjacent candidates win primaries throughout the US, corporate media is rushing to prop up their favorite “centrist” and “moderate” critics—who, ostensibly, are just looking out for the wellbeing of the Democratic Party—to explain why these candidates people are voting for are actually dangerous and “unelectable.” What the media is refusing to do, on an institutional level, is disclose the glaring conflicts of interests these groups—backed by billionaires, health insurance giants, pro-Israel lobbying firms, and massive corporations —would have in attacking candidates who undermine their sponsors’ bottom lines and ideological agendas.
As progressive, DSA, and DSA-adjacent candidates win primaries throughout the US, corporate media is rushing to prop up their favorite “centrist” and “moderate” critics—who, ostensibly, are just looking out for the wellbeing of the Democratic Party—to explain why these candidates people are voting for are actually dangerous and “unelectable.”
As I noted in TRNN in June, certain personalities and parties with blatant conflicts of interest are being boosted by US media—presented as mere neutral observers who are Deeply Concerned About Electability—to dump on insurgent candidates such as Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, Melat Kiro and, most recently, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed’s primary victory in Michigan signaled serious upward momentum for the latest progressive insurgency within the Democratic Party—and triggered a PR crisis for the Democratic establishment. That momentum was stemmed this week, if only for now, as DSA-endorsed candidate for Wisconsin Governor Francesca Hong was narrowly defeated—a defeat that was reportedly due, in part, to voter concerns over “electability.”
But who shapes “electability” perceptions in our media?
Let’s examine a recent article in The New York Times, which broke the news on August 6, in the wake of El-Sayed’s primary victory, about a $15-million effort by “moderate” group Third Way to attack the DSA specifically and socialism more broadly (despite El-Sayed explicitly being neither a socialist nor a DSA member, but he still champions Medicare for All and cutting US support for Israel, so the distinction to these groups is purely academic). In response to socialist and progressive primary wins, Third Way President Jonathan Cowan told the Times he is “preparing for war” against candidates he views as insufficiently “moderate.” Central to Third Way’s argument are supposed concerns over the “electability” of Democratic candidates facing MAGA Republicans in the November midterms—a motive taken at face value by The New York Times.
Third Way does not publish their donors and refuses to answer media inquiries about who keeps their operation financially afloat.
Not once did Times reporter Shane Goldmacher inquire about or address—much less investigate and unearth—who is funding this operation. The money is simply said to come from Third Way. But Third Way does not generate revenue. They are backed by specific interests. “Who are these interests?” seems like a fairly obvious question that a reporter should ask. Alas, it’s not one Shane Goldmacher seems the least bit interested in.
So who is backing Third Way?
Third Way does not publish their donors and refuses to answer media inquiries about who keeps their operation financially afloat. But reporting in The Nation in 2013 revealed the group was being backed then by the US Chamber of Commerce, Deutsche Bank, Intel, the Business Roundtable, and the Pharma lobbying giant PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America). More recent digging by The Sludge revealed major donors now include the Republican-run insurance industry front group Better Solutions for Healthcare, PhRMA, CVS Health, pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, and the Business Roundtable. Other major corporate backers include Entergy, Yum! Brands, Amazon, and Meta––all corporations with much to lose in the event Congress passes measures to impose higher taxes on corporations and the rich, or to provide single-payer healthcare for all.
Additionally, Goldmacher quotes two other “centrist” groups in his Times article—the Center for New Liberalism and Welcome PAC—without noting the patronage they receive from billionaire and corporate interests. The Center for New Liberalism, as I documented in 2023, is a front group for Third Way Foundation (which also goes by the name Progressive Policy Institute) and is funded by ExxonMobil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Walmart, and Amazon. (The Third Way Foundation used to be related to the aforementioned Third Way, but is now its own independent corporate front group.)
WelcomePAC, for its part, is funded directly by mega-billionaires: LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman; six different relatives and heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton (the richest family in America); Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein; Rupert Murdoch’s son James Murdoch; and Mark Heising, the founder of private equity firm Medley Partners, among others.
Shouldn’t these obvious conflicts of interest at least be mentioned? Noted in passing, maybe? Especially in an article specifically about one of these groups spending $15 million to attack “the left,” shouldn’t a reporter be asking where exactly the $15 million came from?
Shouldn’t these obvious conflicts of interest at least be mentioned? Noted in passing, maybe? Especially in an article specifically about one of these groups spending $15 million to attack “the left,” shouldn’t a reporter be asking where exactly the $15 million came from? Or where the money behind these other Deeply Worried Centrist Groups comes from? Isn’t it relevant to note Third Way’s long history of being funded by Wall Street and the health insurance lobby? For a high school reporter, this would obviously be the first line of questions to ask. Presumably, Third Way didn’t just manifest the money out of thin air… So who is footing the bill? And shouldn’t potential voters know who is paying for this campaign, and others like it, to bombard them with falsely “objective” arguments about who is and isn’t “electable” in America?
The Times isn’t alone. Recent softball coverage of, op-eds by, or interviews with Third Way and other “moderate groups” in mainstream media also did not disclose who is bankrolling Third Way, which has quickly emerged as a Sensible Voice opposed to the “radical left.”
Shouldn’t potential voters know who is paying for this campaign, and others like it, to bombard them with falsely “objective” arguments about who is and isn’t “electable” in America?
Last week, CBS News did a five-and-a-half-minute puff interview with Third Day’s Jon Cowan, in which Cowan was given free rein to bash the DSA and El-Sayed without mentioning that Cowan’s salary is paid by private health insurance companies and other corporate America behemoths that would all stand to lose a lot of money and power in the event Medicare For All became a mainstream Democratic position. The Washington Post, likewise, published an op-ed by Cowan and Third Way Executive Vice President Matt Bennett the next day, in which they lambast El-Sayed and other progressives’ supposed lack of “electability” without disclosing who backs their astroturf “think tank.” Earlier that same week, CNN ran an otherwise balanced segment on “The Left Insurgency” that nevertheless featured an interview with Cowan and introduced Third Way as a “Democratic centrist group” without mentioning the corporate funders paying him to go on CNN and lament about “electability concerns.”
Why is discussion of “electability” almost entirely being shaped by astroturfed corporate front groups with obvious conflicts of interest?
It’s not that US media should never report on potential “electability” dynamics—with both the center and left––but why not turn to parties with fewer obvious conflicts of interest? Why not consult independent pollsters or academics? Why not ask Left-aligned experts as well as those on the dole of the Health Insurance lobby? Why is discussion of “electability” almost entirely being shaped by astroturfed corporate front groups with obvious conflicts of interest?
Journalism is supposed to, at least in theory, be about questioning the motives of the powerful, following the money, and connecting the dots. It’s not supposed to be the practice of credulously reprinting the opinions of powerful people presenting themselves as having only the noblest of motivations.
But here’s the rub: these billionaire- and corporate-backed groups, and their media mouthpieces, can’t talk about the forces propping them up, because to do so would give the game away. They can’t openly discuss or defend their attendant ideologies of capitalism, deregulation, imperialism, and Zionism because these are increasingly unpopular among the Democratic voters whose interests they allegedly care about. So what’s left? If they can’t speak openly about their elite patrons and make arguments from first principles, all that’s left is feigned concern over the “electability” of the “other guy.” That’s why it’s all they talk about. They can’t make arguments for “centrism” or against Medicare for All, so all they have is a nonstop posture of Deep Concern Over Electability, which, over time, gets repeated into becoming conventional wisdom despite no empirical basis for the narrative that “moderate” “centrists” are more electable. It apparently doesn’t matter how many times the centrist wing of the party loses Congress or blows it to Trump, they still claim, through sheer assertion and dogma and endless media spots, that they are uniquely positioned to “defeat republicans.” And this is a posture our media pundits echo without an ounce of skepticism.
It apparently doesn’t matter how many times the centrist wing of the party loses Congress or blows it to Trump, they still claim, through sheer assertion and dogma and endless media spots, that they are uniquely positioned to “defeat republicans.”
“Moderate” groups like Third Way are fronts for corporate America and billionaire interests; they’re not just aw-shucks groups of concerned citizens with organic worries about Democrats losing in November. Those claiming to be journalists should ask deeper questions, follow the money, and provide readers essential context that the person being held up as a neutral—if vaguely ideological—expert on winning elections is sponsored by the very health insurance industry that stands to lose a great deal should the progressives they’re bashing ever ascend to positions of power.
