Sometime last year I began to notice the similarities between what I would hear when speaking to various Third Way folks and what would be coming out of the White House a month or two later…

Another area where its influence has borne fruit is the White House’s relationship with the business community. Throughout 2010, Third Way counseled Dems that anti-business populism was bad for the economy and the middle class, and a political loser. Since the midterm elections, Obama has been making moves to thaw that relationship, including a speech to the Chamber of Commerce this week.

Brookings Institution scholar Bill Galston, who has done work with Third Way, told me: “They have been consistently smart and strategic. It’s beyond dispute that the organization and its principal voices have been cited increasingly frequently as the standard bearers for the more moderate, third-way plank of the Democratic Party.”