By Gabriel Debenedetti @ NYMag.com, July 23

[....] These days it’s almost impossible to avoid resigned jokes among friends of the group about just how out of favor their Clintonphile politics supposedly are with the Democrats’ base. Late last week, as I walked into a hotel basement ballroom where Third Way was convening some of the country’s leading center-left officials in Columbus, Ohio, a strategist in attendance peered up from the Hilton pastries and texted me, wryly: “Welcome to the Wall St Wing of the Democratic Party.” [....]

Back in Washington, Bernie Sanders and his newfound allies had laid claim to the party [....]

But in Ohio, more than 200 centrist lawmakers, operatives, and donors — including some former Hillary Clinton aides and backers — flew in from 20 of the country’s most politically relevant states to listen to a lot of speeches and panels and try to figure out how, exactly, their embattled faction could escape electoral isolation and spearhead a blue triumph in 2020. Third Way had spent the last two years conducting research and testing messages, and now — emerging from hours of strategy and policy sessions, polling-data slideshows, and Silicon Valley–style discussion about how best to influence the party’s disruptors — they were here to make clear to the insurgent progressive left that the center now intends to stand up and fight back, and that it has Sanders in its sights just as squarely as Donald Trump [....]