Last spring, the Progressive Policy Institute and the Democratic Leadership Council formally split, and now a revamped PPI is up and running with a new website to engage the public policy debate more effectively online and, in the words of long-time PPI president Will Marshall, to provide "a kind of ballast in the progressive coalition that keeps it close to the sentiments of the progressive center in America."

Marshall's group has decamped from offices it shared with the DLC on Capitol Hill to new digs in Dupont Circle and has assembled a core staff of seven to run the website. "We really completely reinvented the Progressive Policy Institute into a web-based operation that relies on a network model rather than a faculty-model think tank." In other words, there are fewer in-house thinkers and experts.

Financing for the operation comes from individuals, corporations and foundations, much as it did previously. Marshall noted that funding from foundations, some of which were skittish about writing checks to PPI, a 501(c)(3), that was tied to the more political DLC, a 501(c)(4), is likely assume more importance than in earlier years.

The PPI and DLC spent 20 years together and were both key players in Bill Clinton's success in winning back the White House for Democrats in 1992 and taming some of the party's liberal excesses. But Marshall said, "It was time for a change. I just felt the old configuration had served its purpose and PPI could play its role more effectively as an independent entity... and be able to join the debate in real time."