Democratic stars at Netroots Nation who could run for President soon

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the Netroots Nation convention in New Orleans this year.

Fortunately, NN has put up numerous videos of speeches and panels on their Facebook page.

I'm going to grump a bit here. Because the Facebook page could be arranged to have the videos more easily accessible. For instance, I'm commenting here on the speeches by presumed Presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warrren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. I'm looking as I'm writing at the Video tab of their Facebook page, and not one of the three appears on the first page of the video links. The Harris video appears in the sixth row, Warren's in the seventh, and Cory's in the eighth. And we can't embed Facebook videos in a blog like this.

Meanwhile, on the Sunday after the convention ended on Saturday, the Netroots Nation channel's home page on YouTube doesn't seem to feature a single video from the 2018 event, although it does ones from the 2007, 2009, and 2017 ones. Their videos page also seems to be without 2018 videos.

I think NN can and should do better than this on online media. That is a key aspect of their mission and branding, after all!

I was really struck by Elizabeth Warren's speech. She's a familiar face at Netroots Nation, and she knows that audience. And she's always good a highlighting a few issues in accessible terms and communicating that she would fight to fix the problems. In this speech, she spent a while talking about her own background in a working-class home. She talked about the villains who have deprived millions of Americans of opportunity and prosperity: predatory bankers, the corruption of money in politics, self-serving CEO's. Then she pivoted to talking about the importance of unity among working people because her list of elite villains try to divide working people against each other in order to achieve their self-dealing and unworthy ends.

Left populism, in other words. In fact, this speech could be used as an excellent example of how left populism can create the populist model of The People vs. The Elite without demonizing minorities or foreigners or women and clearly in support of democracy.

Corporate Democrat Cory Booker gave a speech of various pretty phrases strung together.

He talked about spirit, familiar liberal quotes, inspirational anecdotes about his mentors, loving the people, interwoven destinies, Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes. He eventally got around to mention a few issues in a vague way, like abusive bail practices and excessive imprisonment. And he repeated his nominal endorsement for Medicare for All. His main message seems to be, "I'm likable." He didn't really tell a convincing story about if and why he's decided it wasn't a good idea to have been a shill for BigPharma and pander to the Christian Right for years. His speech was basically a stock corporate Dem pitch: rhetorically focused on "identity politics" issues and invoking feel-good vibes from the 1960s but carefully quiet about the very serious class issues that decades of largely bipartisan Reagan-Thatcher economics have left us.

California Sen. Kamala Harris' speech favorably impressed the very astute Charlie Pierce:

First real speech I've ever seen Kamala Harris give and it's a sharp one. #NetrootsNation

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 3, 2018

My initial impression was less favorable:

She also tossed in a vague phrase about "jobs of tomorrow" which in Clinton-speak has always meant, we'll pretend we care about unemployment and retraining and blah, blah, but we won't do jack about it.

— Bruce Miller (@brucemillerca) August 3, 2018

Harris came to the Senate with a less than unmistakably progressive record. And she's been in the Senate under Trump, where it's safe for ConservaDems to take progressive positions. When the votes actually might get something like Medicare for All enacted, things may look very different. I'm still very cautious about seeing Harris as anything more than the standard "bipartisan" Democrat who tries to appeal to Republicans who wouldn't vote for a Democrat in a million years. I think there is good possibility she'll turn out to be more than that. But right now I'm stuck with the reserations.