Activists of the Netroots Nation Know Their Enemy in the 2020 Democratic Primary: Joe Biden

PHILADELPHIA – Senator Elizabeth Warren stole the show at the Netroots Nation Presidential Forum, if only because she was the only leading presidential candidate to run.

Senators Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee and Julian Castro, former secretary of the HUD, attended the presidential forum at Netroots, an annual gathering of nearly 4,000 progressive activists. Meaning. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, on the other hand, were obviously absent.

"I do not know why you gave this territory to a favorite," said Vox, founder and publisher of the Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, a member of Netroots' board of directors. "Warren is the one who did like a bandit here." She has the whole yard, queen of the night.

But to say that the organized progressive activist community has chosen Warren as the nominated candidate more than a year before the 2020 presidential election would be premature. Netroots, which is generally a good litmus test for the exciters of the Democratic base in presidential cycles, was more moderate and cautious than in previous years.

Unsurprisingly, Warren was clearly favorite; she came to Netroots since she was a professor at Harvard Law School, charged with creating the Office of Consumer Financial Protection, and she was greeted with the songs of "Warren! Warren! Warren! As she took the stage. But conversations with several of the most prominent militant groups and progressive think tanks during the weekend's events revealed that Warren has not yet sewn the progressive wing. And while Sanders and Harris were absent, their substitutes and their fans certainly were not. The same can not be said for others like South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), however.

"You had the Buttigieg boom earlier this year and you might have thought it could have continued in a place like this, but that's really not the case," said Neil Sroka, spokesperson for Progressive Political Action Committee Democracy For America. "What's pretty clear is Bernie, Warren, and maybe Kamala."

"Frankly, I think a lot of people here are going to make some strategic decisions about who they will vote for at the primary level," he said. "In the end, everyone here is committed to electing an inclusive populist champion for the presidency."

Although participants have not yet identified which of these three candidates is their favorite, it was clear that the conference progressives had identified their enemy: Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 favorite. weekend, a pop-up podcast titled "Why is Joe Biden the Major Democrat least eligible for the presidency in 2020?"

"No one is eager to see Biden," Moulitsas said plainly. "He is old, tired and elite."

Three names that matter: Warren, Harris and Sanders

Bastiaan Slabbers / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Seven months after the first voters of 2020 had their say in the Democratic primary of Iowa, progressives are discovering a considerable number of candidates in a party increasingly turned to ideals of left-wing care. public health taxes on wealth, through free universities. proposals.

But at Netroots, only three names had significant energy behind them: Sanders, Harris and, of course, Warren.

Nina Turner, co-chair of the Sanders campaign, spoke at a protest outside Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital, a local institution that is expected to close in the coming weeks. Among the participants in the event were local activists, doctors and Netroots participants who were supportive of the movement. Sanders himself was not present, but it was a demonstration of the political revolution in which he was trying to build a campaign.

"With these hands, we will save Hahnemann Hospital and elect Senator Bernie Sanders to the presidency of the United States of America," Turner told a crowd with arms raised singing "Bernie, Bernie, Bernie." Sanders is scheduled to gather at the hospital on Monday.

Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), who has already endorsed the senator in the 2020 election, has joined Harris. Lee was honored as a voice to listen – an intellectual leader – while first-time Democrat representatives Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ayanna Pressley (MA) and Deb Haaland (NM) overwhelmed her with praises. . Lee's message: that the progressive movement must fight for its candidate, "whoever she may be."

The grassroots activists are an electoral group that Warren has been cultivating for more than a decade, since she created the CFPB and has forged a reputation for having clashed with major banks and corporations. When she took the stage at the Philadelphia Convention Center, the crowd went wild. She was especially the only candidate to have protested steadily in the middle of her speech, with immigration activists wanting to know if Warren would give citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants and reunite families. Warren proposed his proposal for immigration, which would do that.

Progressives wonder who can win

Biden's lead in polls means that progressive activists approach their choices in the primary with some caution.

"I love them both – Bernie and Warren – I trust them. In the end, where will they be in January or February of next year? Said Sroka. "Who is above and who is below?"

Warren's main challenge is still that of black voters, with whom she struggles more closely than Sanders, Harris and Biden. A recent Morning Consult poll showed that Warren represented only 7% of black voters who claimed to be his first choice, compared to 21% for Sanders and 16% for Harris (and Biden leading with 38%).

But there is reason to believe that Warren could increase his support for colored voters, said She the People's President and Founder Aimee Allison at the conference.

"We are looking at the impact of her way of speaking our language, specifically calling our community into her political prescriptions," Allison told Vox. "It's a winning combo."

She said that Harris did not fear her own experiences as a woman of color and claiming her identity in front of a national democrat public is also a very attractive message. She added that, while Sanders' policies help elevate citizens, she believes the Vermont senator is still struggling to find language to describe the community.

"In our presidential forum, I collapsed when Bernie Sanders used the word" minority, "Allison said. "When you talk about minority, you ignore people of color. We are the majority in many states that you must win: Florida, Georgia, California, Arizona, Nevada. "

Last year, Netroots had extensively discussed the division between Warren and Sanders in the progressive wing, but Sanders' dominance did not seem secure this year. It was clear that Warren had claimed his claim from the Sanders base.

"At the end of the day, some one will oppose Biden or Kamala, and if the socialist left eventually fall behind Bernie against Kamala, it will be a long-term problem for the socialist left" Sean McElwee, with the progressive think tank Data for Progress, said. "You do not want socialism to be seen as a white male identity politics, and Warren is able to form a coalition."

And Harris has emerged as a potential compromise for progressives – a negotiation that could be conducted.

Progressives have an obvious enemy, but they do not have a leader

Progressives may not know exactly who they want to be nominated Democrats in 2020, but they know who they do not want: Joe Biden.

Some Netroots activists acknowledged that they would support Biden at a general election if they had no other choice. But when it comes to excitement for Netroots, Biden seems to be all the disdain of the participants, especially because, despite the fact that he is clearly trying to capitalize on his ties to Obama's progressive brand, Biden did not seek to cultivate a progressive base.

"Biden uses a time-stretching strategy," said Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Family Party. "It can be placed in a number of forums and spaces to be examined closely by the base. Our job is not to crown the person as the third way and the elite media makers think to be the most eligible. "

"The headquarters of the Biden campaign is four blocks away and the only person I saw coming here is his computer scientist," Sroka said. "The fact that they do not even work to try to argue this community is a sign of a campaign that can not determine the future of the party."

The Biden campaign did not comment on their attendance at the conference.

Highlighting the theme of a group of three prominent people, some Netroots participants were offered a pack of six craft beers by the event organizers. Warren, Sanders and Harris were the only presidential candidates to carry a beer to their name: there was Professor Warren Perfect Plan's "Pale Ale" (a "quasi-session beer"), the "Kamala & # 39; s California Common "(a lager), and the" Bernie's Barleywine "(" Gritty's favorite beer ").

Joe Biden and the group of other moderate white men in the presidency, however, were symbolized by the "average white beer of the centrist", according to the beer guide given to the participants.

While the progressives represent only a segment of the Democratic electorate, Biden and the other candidates who attended Netroots were not so enthusiastic, could use their support. Especially since it was the progressives who helped to energize the party's base before the mid-term elections of 2018 that saw the Democrats take over the seat of the House of Representatives.