2020 Dems love the progressive fire but fear the flame

PHILADELPHIA — More progressives gathered here over the weekend for the annual Netroots Nation convention than at any time in the event’s 13-year history.

Yet all but one of the top-tier candidates running for president, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, were nowhere to be found.

While it might have seemed like a missed opportunity, given the state of the roiling progressive grass roots — with the movement’s confrontational tactics and insistence on down-the-line, issue-by-issue adherence to liberal orthodoxy — the campaigns concluded that the safer play was to send their regrets.

It’s a calculation they frequently have to make this year as candidates intent on controlling their own message — and avoiding bad viral moments — run up against a battalion of trained leftist activists bird-dogging them, demanding specific, on-the-record answers.

But it’s also a notable contradiction. Democrats running in the 2020 primary incessantly boast of their progressive bona fides to appeal to the party’s most fiery faction. When given the opportunity to engage with those progressives at a key moment in the primary cycle, however, most of the top-polling candidates declined to get too close to the flame.

“It’s definitely fear, what else? They’ve known since March that this conference is happening, so don’t give me shit about scheduling,” said Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive website Daily Kos, which sponsored the Netroots candidate forum. “It’s stupid. … If they want to cede the ground to Warren, then great.”

The most conspicuous no-show at Netroots Nation was Sen. Bernie Sanders. Even though the Vermont independent’s policy platforms, including Medicare for All, are gospel to the left flank of the party, Sanders in 2015 learned the hard way how quickly a candidate can get burned.

At that Netroots event, both Sanders and another candidate, former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, were disrupted or shouted down by Black Lives Matters protesters at the convention in Phoenix. O’Malley’s awkward response that “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter,” proved devastating to his candidacy. But Sanders’ exchange — including telling protesters he wasn’t going to try to outshout them and “if you don’t want me to be here, that’s OK” — has not only haunted him but also helped create a lasting narrative of a tenuous relationship with African Americans.

This year, a rift between Sanders and Moulitsas also played a role.

Sanders’ team raised questions about Moulitsas’ objectivity, given his past public embrace of Warren. And in recent days, sniping ensued by both sides. Moulitsas ribbed Sanders for having participated in a Fox News town hall but skipping the progressive event.

It was also a testament to Sanders’ tendency not to put himself into uncontrolled situations; he sticks to rallies and his standard stump speech, and rarely takes questions from reporters.

Still, one of Sanders’ top surrogates scoffed at the notion that his absence had to do with anything other than scheduling.

“I think his inflated ego needs to dial it back a little bit, that he thinks that the world revolves around him, that Senator Sanders is not here because of him. Who the hell is he?” Sanders campaign co-chairwoman Nina Turner said of Moulitsas. “The senator is running for president, trying to galvanize people all over this country. I wonder, does he feel that same way about Vice President Biden? Or Senator Harris or Mayor Pete Buttigieg or some of the other 99 candidates running for president on the Democratic side?

“I’m exaggerating, but why just pull out Senator Sanders? He had an engagement that could not be changed, and he’s fulfilling his obligation to that engagement.”

Sanders was one of many candidates to cite a scheduling conflict. But he was to be in Philadelphia on Monday, and Kamala Harris, who also cited a calendar issue, was just two hours away in Atlantic City on the same day as the Netroots forum. Harris spoke at last year’s gathering.

The squeamishness in showing up is a testament to the confrontational nature of questions that can lead to embarrassment on hot-button issues. It was the recent impromptu questioning by an ACLU activist of Biden’s opposition to the federal funding of abortion, caught on camera, that led to a swift reversal of his position.

That type of so called bird-dogging, which tries to pin down a politician’s position from the rope line or as an interruption to public remarks, is on the rise.

“That’s part of the game, and we oughta be able to move through it and I believe that we can,” said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who participated in Saturday’s candidate forum. “So I’m not daunted by that — you gotta learn how to roll with the punches.”

Referring to the co-captain of the championship U.S. women’s soccer team, he said: “I was just thinking about the moment that would happen, I think I would quote Megan Rapinoe saying: ‘We need to listen to each other more and hate less.’ Maybe that can get us back to listening to one another.”

It happened at Netroots with Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, on Friday, when activists challenged his position on the death penalty.

“It makes for a really good social media video because it’s confrontational,” said Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns for Color of Change, which was behind the public challenge to Shapiro. “It puts politicians on the spot in a way that I think resonates with a lot of people who are sick of hearing stump speeches and talking points, and they want to hear someone respond to the real questions that people have.”

Roberts acknowledged that while he agreed with the tactic, it might have factored into most 2020 candidates skipping the largest gathering of progressives in the country.

“Campaigns want to be able to control their image, their message,” he said. “If you come into a situation where you feel like someone’s going to interrupt you, put you on the spot, it takes a lot of courage, frankly, to show up in those situations. So I would definitely applaud the candidates who are showing up here.”

The tactic has become so popular among progressives that activists have taken part in bird-dogging training sessions to hone their skills.

Even Warren, long a darling at Netroots, got a taste of it over the weekend, when activists tried to disrupt her remarks about immigration. Still, Warren, whose team has exposed her to thousands of reporter questions and hundreds more at forums she’s held across the country, was able to power through and sidestep any hint of controversy.

That other top-tier candidates failed to show up only ceded ground to Warren. At the same time she’s rising in the polls, she solidified her positioning before the massive gathering — numbering a record 4,000 this year. That allowed her to press her message almost unfettered before dozens and dozens of the party’s most active, who tend to help organize and knock on doors.

Aside from Warren and Inslee, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro also attended.

Biden, the polling frontrunner, stayed away, even though his campaign headquarters is in Philadelphia. That was expected, given the former vice president’s past clashes with the left flank of the party, including his recent criticisms of Medicare for All. Indeed, the event featured a pop-up panel that argued why Biden was the “least electable.”

Some top progressive lawmakers who addressed the event were scratching their heads over the absence of 2020 candidates.

“If I were running for president, I would come speak here,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington said. “It is one of the largest progressive gatherings, it’s important.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said it was the same gathering of progressives years ago that helped propel his Senate run.

“They should all be here,” Merkley said of the 2020 candidates. “When I first ran for Senate and people thought I had no chance against the incumbent Republican, I went to the Netroots down in Austin, Texas, and it gave me so much energy to take on a powerful sitting senator, to have grass roots hear what I was saying.”

“I would think that every candidate would want to be right here, speaking directly to the progressive forces. … I mean, these are the folks who organize communities to get things done.”

Alex Thompson contributed to this report.