The "New, New Democrats"

Aug 6

In 2025, Centrist "Majority Democrats" Recreate Clinton's and the Democratic Leadership Council's Military Corporate Agenda

This report originally appeared in Restoration of America News and is reprinted with permission.

In a recent report, Restoration News investigated the rise of the modern Democratic Party in 1992 at the hands of "New Democrats": Bill Clinton along with Clinton's key backer the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). This is the Democratic Party that is being recreated in 2025, via think tanks and PACs and conferences and contributions, away from the attention of voters. And, as this investigation will show, there is a very good reason for the engineered inattention.

This is a Democratic Party, like Clinton's and DLC's before it, that is doubling down on military and corporate expansion at the expense of the representative (d)emocracy promised by our constitutional system of government. Tracing the "New New Democrats" behind the Clintonian reinvention, the policies these players are pushing, and the deceptive way they are going about selling them to the public reveals the scope of their plans—and their threat to the American republic.

The Recreation of the DLC…

On July 10, 2025, The New York Times, in an article titled "These Younger Democrats Are Sick of Their Party's Status Quo," reported on the formation of Majority Democrats: "a new group of elected officials from all levels of government [with] outsized ambitions to challenge political orthodoxies and remake the party." For those of its readers old enough to remember the politics of the 1990s, The Times located Majority Democrats on familiar ground:

In some ways, the group's structure resembles that of the Democratic Leadership Council, the once-influential group that successfully pushed the party to the middle in the Clinton era.

The DLC's rhetoric of unity and new ideas is certainly reproduced by Majority Democrats. "The thing that unites all of us is that we're trying to build a big tent," said James Talarico, a state representative in Texas. "The status quo of politics is broken," said Jake Auchincloss, a U.S. representative from Massachusetts, "Majority Democrats, a fresh coalition, from mayors to Congress, [is] meant to forge big ideas and new leaders for the next generation."

So is the DLC's reliance on political and media strategists at the expense of organizers or advocates from the ground. One of these strategists is Seth London, who recently joined former John Fetterman aide Adam Jentelson to form Searchlight, a new think tank pushing in the same direction as Majority Democrats. In London's words, in a post-election memo, the 2025 Democratic Party should imitate

the Democratic Leadership Council which was formed in the wake of landslide losses and ultimately succeeded at reshaping the party in the 1980s and 1990s. The DLC recognized that…the work of shaping [a party's] identity requires time, money and effort to forge. Our goal isn't to replicate the policies of the DLC, but to leverage its organizational model - a membership organization of and for aligned Democratic Partyleaders – which successfully brought the Democratic Party back from the abyss.

Later in the memo, London referenced as crucial to the Party's coming success an Agenda called "Abundance." This is the Democratic economic plan reported by Restoration News in May that emphasizes "collaboration" between local governments and corporate conglomerates outside of public oversight to remake American housing policy in the name of cheap, fast construction. A third group whose membership overlaps with Searchlight and Majority Democrats, WelcomePAC, has been instrumental in gathering Abundance supporters into a united front.

…their Financial and Media Backers…

In his memo, London wrote that the Democratic Leadership Council "recognized that… the work of shaping [a party's] identity requires time, money and effort to forge." This is a more telling statement than it might seem. While time and effort are generic to any endeavor, money is specific, and connotes the opposite of popular politics, which is based on organizing and advocating and conversation; rather, money connotes the outsized influence of a narrow few. London's CV, not surprisingly, is peppered with big money connections, among them Michael Bloomberg. And, based on reporting by Henry Burke and Vishal Shankar of The Revolving Door Project, the same narrow monied backers cluster around DLC imitators like London in 2025 as clustered around the DLC in 1992: finance, corporations, tech, and the military.

One of the biggest involvements is from Bloomberg, via his donations to Welcome Pac. Not coincidentally, Bloomberg is a confidante of Michael Steinhardt, who, as Restoration News has reported, was the biggest funder of the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s and early 1990s. There are also Reid Hoffman, and James and Katherine Murdoch, and the Walton Family, among the most prolific corporate donors in America. And there are Rob Granieri, D.E. Shaw's Edward Fishman, and Mark Heising, all principals at hedge funds, quantitative trading firms, or private equity firms. Finally there is David Nierenberg, "an investment manager and former national co-chair for Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns." Many of these wealthy players are connected to the Gulf States and Israel, the main military partners, weapons clients, and tech suppliers to America.

When it comes to media, the main agenda pusher is The Atlantic, owned by the widow of Apple's Steve Jobs, which has taken the DLC-backing New Republic's place as Washington's military corporate mouthpiece. The Atlantic's most prominent reporter, Derek Thompson, is the co-author of the blueprint for the Abundance Agenda; and The Atlantic's premier intellectual voice, Anne Applebaum, is the voice of Washington's foreign policy complex and the contractor-funded think tank nexus that supports it. The New York Times is also increasingly a champion of New New Democrats via Ezra Klein, the most prominent voice on The Times op-ed page and Derek Thompson's co-author of Abundance. So is The Economist, Britain's most prominent establishment magazine which is read by influential players in America, via James Bennet: the former Times editor who is senior editor at The Economist and whose beat is America.

…And Their Political "Fronts"

The New New Democratic politicians who are serving as the spokespeople for this endeavor come from the same places as the politicians who spoke for the "New Democrats" of the 1990s. They are products of intelligence, the armed services, weapons contractors, finance and tech companies, insurance corporations and law firms and consultancies, corporate-funded universities, and those upper-middle income "swing district" suburbs dependent on them.

Intelligence: U.S. Senator from Michigan Elissa Slotkin, Virginia gubernatorial frontrunner Abigail Spanberger, and U.S. Representative from New York Pat Ryan come from the intelligence services (Slotkin and Spanberger from the CIA and Ryan from the Defense Intelligence Agency). They are three of four elected Democratic leaders who entered politics in 2018 explicitly to push back on Donald Trump's efforts to broadcast and reform the unaccountability of American intelligence services.
Defense: U.S. Representative from New Jersey and gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill, U.S. Representative from Maine Jared Golden, and U.S. Representatives from Massachusetts Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton are military veterans whom Democrats have typically run in swing races since at least the mid-2000s. They have links through their past work to "big law" and federal prosecutors, Homeland Security, corporate consultancies, financial firms (multiple times), insurance behemoths, and research universities which are major recipients of defense grants.
Israel: U.S. Representative from New York Ritchie Torres has made his career as probably House Democrats' most prominent supporter of Israel, "the leading recipient of U.S. foreign aid, including military assistance."
Finance and Tech: These players include former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Housing and Education Secretary and New York governor Andrew Cuomo, U.S. Representative from New Jersey Josh Gottheimer, and U.S. Senator from Colorado Michael Bennet, whose brother is The Economist's James Bennet. They are all veterans of the corporate-entangled Clinton White House. Not coincidentally, they are deeply connected to finance and tech players and the law firms representing them.
Swing Suburbs: U.S. Senator from Arizona Ruben Gallego, U.S. Representative from Washington Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, U.S. Representative from Colorado Joe Neguse, U.S. Representative from Minnesota Angie Craig, and U.S. Representative from New Mexico GabeVasquez come either from swing or rural districts or states. These are districts which "centrist" Democrats have won since at the least the 2000s by emphasizing national security, low taxes, and moderate social policies. Or these politicians come from states or districts which are Democrat but heavily suburban: the upper-income, socially moderate bastions whose members were key targets of New Democrats starting in the 1990s, as Restoration News reported in its previous investigation.

The specific, and deceptive, policies promoted by the New New Democrats flow from their backgrounds and backers.

The New New Democrats Double Down on Military Corporatism…

The New New Democrats have scored coverage off of their apparent support of funding for national defense. But attention to national security, in the hands of the New New Democrats, does not exactly mean what we're encouraged to think it means, namely securing America.

Securing America would mean doing what New New Democrats like Elissa Slotkin have said they would do: Use their experience inside of the military corporate complex to make exact cuts to it. But this is not what they are doing. There is no mention from the New New Democrats of using antitrust to break up the "big five" weapons contractors whose uncompetitive inefficiencies, as Restoration News has reported in the past, have put American soldiers at risk. Instead there are a series of bills introduced to benefit contractors which have donated to New New Democrats' campaigns. There is also lockstep support for the War in Ukraine: a boondoggle for intelligence-backed contractors, "humanitarians," and weapons contractors of all kinds.

Many of the New New Democrats also gain "national defense" points by breaking from other Democrats to vote in favor of ICE, seemingly a "moderate move." What they never do is offer legislation or amendments conditioning whom ICE can contract with for services like prison construction and deportation transportation. This is a strategy which would secure tangible wins (or at least attempted ones) on issues like competitive bidding contracts that reduce corporate conglomeration and increase product quality. It is also a natural strategy for ambitious members of any opposition party to take: Play off the popular moves of the dominant Party, then offer their own improvements on them. But there is a good reason why the New New Democrats don't do this: it would mean taking on the very defense contractors which fund them; not just Slotkin and Spanberger as Restoration News has reported in the past, but other New New Democrats as well.

And the militarization and corporatization of American life at the hands of the New New Democrats doesn't end with the defense industry and its dependencies. It extends to their Abundance agenda: a replay of urban development policies in the 1990s and 2000s in cities and suburbs that help monopolistic corporations and also play directly to military interests.

…and The Corporatization of American Cities and Suburbs

Restoration News has reported on the effects of earlier versions of Abundance. In cities, at the hands of corporate-and-tech-tied mayors like Michael Bloomberg (and Bloomberg's deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff, Ritchie Torres's first backer), earlier versions of Abundance displaced the middle class and increased homelessness and crime. On the suburban front the main past Abundance operators were "too-big-to-fail" financial firms which provided low-cost mortgages to lower-income families—until the music stopped with the 2008 financial crash, when suburbs were overtaken by abandonments and crime. In both cases these policies were glossed with "progressive" sheens. Large swaths of cities like New York were de facto levelled in the name of encouraging tourism, courting tech, and ensuring bike lanes and new trees. All the while, high-risk mortgages were sold and cheap homes built to ensure that minorities could live in the suburbs too. Progressive rhetoric aside, the end result was the same: a rise in homelessness in cities and the abandonment of overleveraged homes in suburbs, leading to an increase in surveillance policing to cope with rises in crime. This, in turn, enriched contractors and diminished trust between communities and police.

Just as in the 1990s and Aughts, current Abundance agenda pushers are emphasizing the purported environmental benefits and benefits to minority communities of their plans. But what Abundance is not doing, again, is as telling as what it is doing. As Restoration News and other outlets have reported in the past, the major problem in the development of cities and suburbs since the last decades of the twentieth century is lack of competition. Namely, a small number of real estate and financial power players use their access to government to ensure de facto non-competitive contracts that let them build cheap and fast without regard for quality of life or unintended consequences like homelessness or over-leveraged houses or even the possibility of building collapse. The clear solution to this problem—the solution that would help minorities, environmentalists, and everyone else Abundance pushers claim to want to help—is antitrust. But Lina Khan, President Biden's former FTC chair whose aggressive use of antitrust law has been endorsed by, among others, Vice President J.D. Vance, has no connection to the New New Democrats. Their loyalties are with the corporate interests to which she is opposed.

The Pacification of Progressives and Scapegoating of the Left…

Like Bill Clinton during his 1992 campaign, the New New Democrats are actively working to sell their undemocratic vision by packaging it as something other than it is using "triangulation." Like Clinton, they draft off of popular Republican national security policies; then use social issues to villainize the Right to the Left and economic issues to villainize the Left to the Right. Like Clinton, this "divide and conquer" strategy and the policies it produces only benefit the military corporate center.

To appease their progressive base, the New New Democrats work to separate identity issues from issues of political economy. Their politicos are supportive, often in the name of "diversity," of the social issues (abortion, gay marriage, climate) that are the wallpaper of the Democratic base. They are also more than eager to criticize Republicans (the "woke right") as cultural fundamentalists. What they are notably not is in favor of any of the Democratic organizations that actually push the party to reflect the will of voters through on-the-ground organizing, activism, and advocacy. These "Left" organizations include environmental advocates, public transparency groups, civil liberties nonprofits, and labor unions. Conservative constitutional populists disagree with many of these groups' policies, but they also share their core political aim: to make government accountable to actual people, not the military corporate state.

So it's not a coincidence that these Left organizing groups are (far more than even Donald Trump) the main adversary of the New New Democrats: In their telling the primary obstacles to progress in America. This is empirically not true. For example, private sector labor unions are among the less powerful factions of the Democratic Party; and development projects in which they have been involved have not suffered from efficiency issues as the New New Democrats allege. But it's also not the point. The point is to erode those organizations that do the work of democracy: rallies, organizing, persuasion, get out the vote drives. This is exactly the kind of politics the New New Democrats don't want—because it hurts their backers.

…and Co-option of Conservatives

While New New Democrats burnish their image with the Right by attacking the Left, they also push policies purportedly appealing to the Right. "The Democrats' Patriotic Vanguard," announced Anne Applebaum in an article in The Atlantic about Elissa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, and Mikie Sherrill in 2024, emphasizing their focus on national security. Another major focus of these New New Democrats is security at home: Torres, Cuomo, and others have made crime prevention central to their vision of righting America—ignoring the fact that their urban and suburban development policies are the drivers of both crime, and the militarized police response that for three decades has followed.

Some conservative groups, like the Madison Coalition, are listening to the New New Democrats, so it's important to say what these policies that some conservatives find appealing are not. Namely, they are not directed to grassroots conservatives who care about the constitution or its guarantee that the people direct government, preferably a small central government (not the other way around). In fact, the areas where the New New Democrats appeal to the Right, like the areas they appeal to the Left, only expand the central government's power to the benefit of security contractors, weapons contractors, and monopoly corporations.

The American Authoritarian Playbook—and How to Fight It

As Restoration News reported in its recent review of the creation of the Democratic Leadership Council, the main impact of giving corporate and military interests more influence in America is to erode the democracy of a constitutional republic. It is also to create a politics targeted to upper middle-class white-collar suburbanites and urbanites dependent on corporations and the security state. The question is whether this play will succeed in a country whose politics are increasingly working class, wage-oriented, and distrustful of the establishment.

The recent success of Donald Trump's anti-establishment campaign suggests otherwise. So does the success of Zohran Mamdani in New York: running a campaign focused on organizing and on-the-ground engagement against the better-funded and highly media-ized New and New New Democrat Andrew Cuomo. Indeed, as Restoration News will cover in an upcoming report, Mamdani's victory, which brought tens of thousands of new voters into the process, is a repudiation of the New New Democrats' brand of politics. More important, it is one which can be replicated across different parties with different policies who are working to stop this power grab.

Matt Wolfson