In the process, the organization is part of an underappreciated new trend at Beltway policy organizations, where white papers are giving way to a kind of wonk fantasy football as think tanks create in-house government HR shops that aim to have a cadre of ideologically simpatico political appointees ready to go on day one.

“We’re ensuring that center-left Democrats have a seat at the table,” said Destine Hicks-Lundy, a former Biden White House staffer who joined the think tank last week to lead the initiative, which is part of a new effort known as the Moderate Power Project. “We’re making contact with every moderate Democrat that is interested.”

Added deGruyter: “They may not have a degree from an Ivy League institution, but they know how important it is to talk to voters in the middle about restoring order at the border and not to center your entire clean energy pitch on the climate benefits of EVs. As a group, these are people who understand how important it is for Democrats to hold the middle and would be critical advocates as decisions are being made to ensure that our ideas and messages will appeal to a broad coalition of voters.”

If that basic concept sounds familiar, it should.

The same notion of stocking the White House with like-minded confederates is at the core of the highest-profile think tank endeavor of the current election cycle, the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025.” It’s a blueprint for the next GOP administration that prominently features a vast roster of ideologically reliable appointees, pretrained and ready to staff the new government on inauguration day. The effort, rolled out last year and likened to a conservative LinkedIn, soon got competition from elsewhere in the MAGA firmament, as the America First Policy Institute announced its own bank of RINO-free potential hires.

All of the various initiatives of groups across the spectrum lean on a logic that was popularized in part by the progressive Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Personnel is policy.

In fact, if there’s one thing that right, left and center all seem to agree on at this fractious moment in politics, it’s that the worker bees of presidential administrations — the holders of even minor jobs in the “plum book” of 9,000 or so politically appointed federal jobs — matter a great deal. That’s a pretty significant change in a Washington culture that viewed anonymous lower-level political appointees as a mere extension of whoever happened to win the White House.

On the left, the most exasperated knock on the Obama administration was that, even if the liberal president may have wanted action after the financial crisis, he hired a bunch of Wall Street veterans who stymied efforts to make the fat cats pay. On the right, it’s practically gospel that the Trump administration was handicapped when the surprise president either appointed a bunch of old-GOP regulars who restrained his populist instincts or put in place a bunch of neophytes who didn’t know how to work the bureaucracy.

And during the Biden years, a frequent refrain from disaffected centrists is that, however mainstream the 46th president’s instincts may be, the agencies of his government (and the workplaces of Democratic pols and policy groups) are chockablock with overly strident post-collegiate types who have allegedly spoiled his party’s reputation with normies.

Against that backdrop, it stands to reason that a think tank would want to get into the talent-bank business. What’s the point of all those white papers if a bunch of shaky appointees are going to go wobbly when it comes to turning them into actual policy?

Or at least that’s one way to look at it.

More cynically, a think tank’s talent bank is just an updated version of a Washington perennial: maintaining a network. Most successful players in government and politics are also inveterate collectors of people. Anyone with even a little bit of power in the capital is apt to have a list of names — proteges, cronies, allies, folks who’d surely do a bang-up job — ready to share with an incoming occupant of the White House.

“Part of CAP’s mission from its inception has always been to support and grow dedicated staff ready to support the critical functions of democracy by serving in our government,” said Patrick Gaspard, who leads the liberal Center for American Progress.

But it’s one thing to place your own people in jobs. It’s another to take on the organized role of talent recruiter or ideological vetter, a new trend in the think tank world.

When an institution like a think tank does political HR in a formal way, the upsides may involve broader lists (Heritage’s Project 2025 solicits applications from the general public and turns them into recommendations for offices across the vast government) and be less subject to personal favoritism (the organization scours applicants’ social media for evidence of anti-Trump posts or other signs of disloyalty).

In an age of government paralysis, when a lot of wonky policy-crafting seems unlikely to ever lead to anything, being seen as a repository of personnel is also a chance to look relevant, get attention and raise money. At a place like Third Way, which has often been treated like an afterthought as progressives have gained influence in the Democratic coalition, it’s a savvy way to boost the organization’s profile.

Third Way’s deGruyter says their goal for the Moderate Power Project is to raise $10 million, starting with a $1 million donation from the think tank itself. Beyond the talent bank, the project also includes a “venture fund” to seed politically simpatico groups. The inaugural batch of recipients, announced this week, include a center-left Substack, an outfit creating content for moderate swing voters, and a program designed to mobilize young voters “who fall outside the political extremes.”

Just as when a senator or a mayor or an old college roommate of the new president sends along a job recommendation, a talent bank at a donor-funded organization has the potential to create some ethical quandaries: What’s to stop a funder from pressuring a think tank to include his dubiously credentialed nephew on its list of pre-certified appointees?

There’s also the awkwardness that surrounds any trend that serves to increase the identification between a private nonprofit and a sitting government — something that may be a boon to a particular think tank that wants to look influential, but can be uncomfortable for those who think about the policy ecosystem writ large.

“My concern with ‘left’ or ‘right’ talent banks is that they would fuel the idea/narrative that the state is being captured,” said Enrique Mendizabal, whose On Think Tanks studies think tanks themselves.

Hicks-Lundy, who worked on White House personnel during her time in the Biden administration, said the talent bank program is so new that they are still working out the details of how they’ll avoid conflicts — and deliver quality.

I suspect those details will actually matter a great deal, especially at an organization interested in providing staffers to Democrats. Many of the divides between center left and left are about cultural style as much as policy takes. Take the electric vehicles that deGruyter was talking about. Most of the left is in favor of transitioning to them. But is that because they’re better for climate change, or because they make our country less reliant on foreign petrostates, or because you think America’s taste for big cars is somehow gauche?

Centrists’ complaints on the subject often boil down to thinking that young progressives themselves tend to live in transit-rich cities and can’t empathize with folks who might like a car-centric life. It’s not clear what kind of resume items you’d look for if you wanted to assemble a roster of people with the correct centrist approach to that sort of thing.

“I think that’s where some of the strength of the organization can come to bear helping kind of flag those issues, or where those particular sensitivities could be really impactful in specific areas,” deGruyter said.

Of course, that all assumes that someone winds up taking their hiring guidance from a think tank’s talent bank. Even in the highest-profile example, that’s not a given. Though Democrats have stepped up attacks on Project 2025 — it was recently the subject of a Biden digital ad — the Trump campaign itself has repeatedly said outside groups don’t speak, or hire, for their candidate.