On Monday morning, I had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Cowan, the founder and president of Third Way, "a Senate-focused progressive advocacy group." In 1992, he co-founded Lead...or Leave, which became the nation's leading Generation X advocacy group, and following the election of Bill Clinton became Senior Advisor to the HUD Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. In the late 1990s, Mr. Cowan served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. I spoke with Mr. Cowan from his office in Washington.

Jonathan Singer: Thank you so much for joining me this morning. It’s a real honor, a real pleasure. Byron York has proclaimed a vast liberal conspiracy. When we look at a comparison in pure numerical terms, Rob Stein has found that the conservative side has about $300 million per year to play around with. The progressive side has significantly less than that. Do you feel confident that there is a vast left wing conspiracy yet, or is it still a ways away?

Jon Cowan: Great question. The simplest way to put it is [that] the focus on whether there is a vast left wing conspiracy or a vast right wing conspiracy really misses the point. The central question is, What are both sides doing to prepare themselves to advance their long-term arguments and to win elections?

Right now, conservatives are simply doing a better job of preparing themselves to win the long-term arguments about the country’s future and to win elections, and progressives are not nearly as well organized to do so. Until progressives figure out a way to organize themselves and make a set of arguments that will connect with self-identified moderate voters in much greater numbers, we have absolutely no chance at building a progressive majority again.

Singer: There does seem to be a start of creating the infrastructure. Of course your organization, Third Way – your think tank – is affiliated with moderate Senate Democrats, and you have a budget, as reported in National Journal in February, of between two and three million dollars. John Podesta’s Center for American Progress has $11 million, the largest piece of the puzzle right now. Do you think you will be able to hit, eventually collectively, the same mass of hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on spreading the message, and creating the message, that the Republicans or the right wing has?

Cowan: Absolutely. Without question. Rob Stein and the Democracy Alliance have started to put together a very large collection of investors who are prepared to make the same kind of massive long-term investment in progressive politics that conservative donors have made into conservative politics.

I expect that because of the work of the Democracy Alliance that over the next number of years – five to ten years – we’ll see a dramatic increase in the amount of money going into multi-issue progressive causes. Not single-issue groups, because on our side they are already very well funded, but on multi-issue groups that take a long-term prospective for the progressive cause, both on issues that we work on as well as the messaging to sell those issues.

Singer: One of the jabs that right wing groups like Heritage have talking down to your organizations and others is that you guys are just the voice of the Democratic Party. You’re not creating ideas, you’re just packaging them to sell to a mass audience. Do you think that’s a fair attack? Or are you doing something different?

Cowan: No I don’t think it’s fair. What Third Way is doing is really unique. We’re looking at the group of self-identified moderate voters who make up 45% of the electorate, and we are thinking up both new ideas as well as the kind of messaging that will sell those ideas that will make the progressive cause relevant and modernized for the 21st Century.

For the 20th Century, without a doubt, progressives led the way. We did the New Deal. We did the Great Society. We were kind of the great reformers in the 20th Century. We won and fought multiple wars. We really pushed the envelope both on social progress and on protecting the country.

We have lost that mantle now, and somehow conservatives have become the ones who are seen as the true reformers and the protectors of the country. Unless we are able to flip that around, we have absolutely no chance of regaining the majority.

Third Way’s work is to really push the boundaries of what’s currently acceptable within the progressive cause, break with the traditional orthodoxies, and look for new ideas and the messaging to sell those ideas to connect with a much larger cut of voters.

Singer: You brought up an important point a couple of moments ago about appealing to the great moderate base of American voters. Looking at the CNN exit poll data, the breakdown is as follows: 21% of the electorate was liberal in 2004, 45% was moderate, 34% was conservative. So clearly there can’t just be a liberal majority. Within the moderates, John Kerry was able to win 54% to 45%, but how do you go about pushing that closer to 60 or 65% to ensure victory in the future?

Cowan: That’s a great question. Kerry was able to win moderates, but not nearly by enough. When you are behind by almost 50% in terms of the percentage of voters who identify as liberal versus conservative, you have to absolutely crush conservatives among self-identified moderates. That’s not what Kerry did, and it’s not what we’re doing in many of the twenty to thirty so-called “red states” where we’re losing. That’s the simple kind of electoral reality.

More importantly, there’s a huge opportunity there. Moderate voters are much more in synch with the long tradition of the progressive cause – of social justice, of economic opportunity, of strong national defense – they’re much more in touch with those values, and the conservatives are steadily being drawn further and further right by their right wing to a place, ultimately, where they’re going to turn off moderate voters.

We’ve got to be positioned so that we are ready to pick up those moderate voters that conservatives consistently turn off. That means we need new ideas and new messaging that will work with those voters and protect our progressive values.

Singer: There’s a careful balancing act that must take place, though. There’s a lot of animosity between some of the so-called “centrists,” led the DLC, and some of the bloggers. I know that Al From had some comments about the left wing of the party that may have been taken out of context by some and you see some of the bloggers come out and hammer at the moderates. How do you balance that and find a happy medium?

Cowan: Great question. The divide between the left and the center, or the moderates and the liberals, is really overstated and really beside the point. You need both parts. The party has to motivate and energize its base and it also has to expand that base and persuade new voters, swing voters, moderate voters to come our way.

The choice between one or the other is a completely false choice, and it’s one that will lead the party down a path at which we can do no better than maybe 40% – in between 35 and the low 40s in the electorate – and even worse in the 20 or 30 red states in which we’re struggling. So it’s a completely false choice, and only by rejecting that choice – finding a way to pull both the most moderate voters as well as self-identified liberal voters – do we have a chance of building a sustainable majority.

In fact, in the 20th Century, what you’ll see is that there was never a liberal majority in the United States, there was a Democratic majority. And the way we got that Democratic majority was that the liberals cut a deal with Southern segregationists, who were Democrats. Only by cutting that deal were they able to maintain a Democratic majority.

So in fact there was never a liberal majority. There was always tension between the left of the party and, at that point, the far, far right of the party. That tension is much less today than it was during the time of Southern segregationists.

What it really means is that instead of trying to recreate a liberal majority that once existed, we’re actually trying to create a progressive majority that never existed, and do it without having to cut the same kind of deal we cut with Southern segregationists 40 years ago.

Singer: We see your counterparts over at the Center for American Progress reaching out to the blogosphere through Think Progress, their blog. Do you foresee setting up something like that at Third Way to connect to the party base?

Cowan: I hope so. We’re so new and getting ourselves fully funded and underway, so it will probably take a little while. Podesta’s group was instantly funded. They had millions and millions of dollars. They just have a much larger capacity than we do.

Our hope is that as our capacity builds, we’ll be able to connect with folks much more widely, particularly out at the grassroots level. That’s almost completely dependent on how well we do in raising money.

Singer: Let’s talk about the South, where you have had a lot of background and focus. I was talking with Michael Dukakis a few weeks back and he brought up the fact that there were literally over ten thousand donors to the Kerry campaign in Alabama alone. There is a base there. How do you rally them to grow that base, because there are clearly activists there, even if some Democrats in Washington write off fighting in Alabama or Mississippi or states that haven’t been won in a long time?

Cowan: Third Way has an entire project on the New South to really take a hard look at how you build a new progressive majority in the South. Nobody really knows right now. Nobody has the answers. But there are elected officials like Senator Mark Pryor from Arkansas, Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas, Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, Governor Mark Warner from Virginia, and many others who have figured out how you can win in the South and be a progressive.

We’re going to be taking, over the next few years, a very close look at the work they do, figuring out what they do right that works, and then helping translate that to progressive elected officials and candidates up and down the ticket in the South.

Singer: There is a piece in the LA Times today by Mark Barabak comparing Democratic prospects in the West with the South. This is something we talked about when you were here at Pomona College a few months ago. When you look at states like Colorado – one of the vice-chairs of your organization, Ken Salazar, is from Colorado – and you look at Montana and some of those other states – Nevada, the Democrats have seen quite a bit of resurgence there. What do you think of the idea that the Democrats need to look west – still look at the South – but look at the West as the key to their resurgence?

Cowan: It’s a tricky thing. Democrats cannot write off the South. First of all, that would be an electoral disaster. Secondly, that would be wrong. The South is a vibrant place with significant pieces of the new economy, one of the most culturally interesting regions of the country. It would be foolish for Democrats to write off the South.

On the other hand, we don’t need to write off the South to actually go aggressively after the West and the Southwest. It should not be an either or choice. Certainly if you get beneath the Presidential level and look at the Senate and House and Governorships, it’s not an either or. We have to be able to do well in both regions. If we write one entire region of the country off, there is no way we get back a Congressional majority, and that would be a disaster, even if we were able to win the White House.

Singer: The exit polling data is a little rough, in terms of the Hispanic vote. Initially it was estimated that he did better than he actually did – his numbers are a little lower now. He seems to have done best in places like New Mexico and in Florida, where they have Hispanic communities that are a little different than the national community.

But you look at a state like Oregon, where I’m from, the Hispanic turnout quadrupled in four years and they voted over eighty percent for the Democrats. I know the Hispanic population in the South is also beginning to grow in places other than Florida, places like Georgia. Do you think it will be possible to co-opt their growth to help spur Democratic regrowth in the region?

Cowan: Very, very hard to say. The larger issue is, beyond any particular region, the all-encompassing issue is: are we willing to look at the progressive cause and think about how we modernize it in a way that does not have us hew to our orthodoxies but begins to try to generate fresh ideas as well as the messaging to sell those ideas. Unless we’re willing to question our orthodoxies and find new ways of achieving traditional ends, we’re not going to be able to regain majority status anywhere in the country except for the two coasts.

Singer: One of the ways you’ve challenged the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party is on Gun Control. If you look at Montana, a person like Brian Schweitzer – their Governor – trumpeted his “A” rating from the NRA. It’s not necessary for someone to get an “A” rating with the NRA, but what are some other creative ways of diffusing issues like guns and issues of religion that are big in many parts of the country?

Cowan: The answer is, in short, that you really have to show genuine respect for people with values. And if you don’t show genuine respect for people’s values, they’re not going to give you their vote.

On guns, my view is that – I grew up actually going to camp shooting guns, enjoyed them – I think that the 48% of the electorate that has a gun in their house, that’s their personal choice and I strongly support them for making that choice. It doesn’t mean guns are for everyone, but for many people it is, and I think it’s a great choice.

For example, people who are trying to respect the values of gun owners need to be strongly for the Second Amendment. They need to understand that people who make the choice to own a gun do that either out of a sense self-defense or love for hunting or sport, and they should deeply and genuinely respect that choice.

That applies to a wide range of other values and cultural issues in which for Democrats to appeal to moderates, we’ve got to return to what I think should be some of our core values: keeping in touch with mainstream values of the country, respecting the choices people make, which means, for example, not having a double standard around privacy. If we believe in privacy for choice, we should also believe in privacy for the Second Amendment.

Singer: One of the ways that Schweitzer and others around the country have been able to work on the gun issue is to turn it around to issues of conservation and the environment. They say to sportsman that President Bush is trying to give away the lands for hunting and other outdoor activities – fishing, and whatnot. That seemed to be successful. Should the Democrats try to push a similar theme across the country, not just in the West?

Cowan: Absolutely. Most hunters deeply love the land, are connected to it, and want to be good stewards of it. And there’s no question that there’s tension in the conservative coalition between people who support gun rights and love the land and people who would actually put the land in jeopardy. There’s no question there’s tension in their coalition, and we absolutely should be looking for ways to drive a wedge into that coalition, because frankly they shouldn’t be allowed to be so contradictory, so hypocritical about protecting the land for their hunting base but destroying the land for those who would want to pollute it.

Singer: Just one last question. What should we look forward to from Third Way in the next year and the longer term as well?

Cowan: You should look for Third Way to do two kinds of work. One is developing legislative, policy ideas that Senators and Senate candidates can carry and introduce that appeal to moderate voters that help them reach out to moderates. The second is Third Way will be doing a series of playbooks on the economy, on national security and on cultural issues to show progressive candidates and progressive elected officials how to handle and talk about these issues, and the messaging around them, in ways that connect to self-identified moderate and independent voters.

Singer: I hope that in the future we can continue the dialogue between the various parts of the Democratic electorate, and we’re as always glad to have you a part of it and help grow the coalition. It was a real pleasure to speak with you. Thanks so much.

Cowan: My pleasure. Any time.

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