Netroots Nation brings back Elizabeth Warren and Pramila Jayapal for 2020 Friday keynote

The world­wide coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has meant a lot of changes for the 2020 edi­tion of Net­roots Nation. The sum­mer con­fer­ence — Amer­i­ca’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sives — is tak­ing place entire­ly online rather in Den­ver as orig­i­nal­ly planned, with talks streamed via YouTube, net­work­ing via app, and the Pub Quiz done with peo­ple imbib­ing from their own glass­es at home on Zoom.

But Dai­ly Kos Elec­tions’ “Sea Org” team still won the Chair­man Emer­i­tus’ Pub Quiz for the umpteenth time to its usu­al cho­rus of boos, and Mass­a­chu­setts’ Eliz­a­beth War­ren appeared for the ninth time, on this occa­sion with Heather McGhee.

In addi­tion to direct­ly polit­i­cal con­cerns, like mak­ing sure the next admin­is­tra­tion’s Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment is head­ed by some­one actu­al­ly com­mit­ted to edu­cat­ing stu­dents, War­ren spoke dur­ing the Fri­day keynote about the deeply per­son­al expe­ri­ence of los­ing her old­est broth­er, Don­ald Reed Her­ring, to COVID-19.

“None of us could be there with him,” War­ren said, describ­ing how it was­n’t safe for any of his fam­i­ly to vis­it him after he was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal before dying in April. “I don’t know what it was like at the end.”

“And I did­n’t get to tell him that I loved him.”

War­ren con­nect­ed that expe­ri­ence to the more than 160,000 Amer­i­cans whose fam­i­lies have felt the same pain, most of them unnecessarily.

“It did­n’t have to be like this. It did not have to be this bad,” War­ren said.

War­ren said Don­ald Trump has to be held account­able for his regime’s incom­pe­tence and his indif­fer­ence to the deaths of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in this coun­try. “The way I get through this is to say, I’d best hon­or my broth­er by get­ting up every day and say­ing, ‘There’s going to be some account­abil­i­ty in this coun­try.’ And in a democ­ra­cy, account­abil­i­ty is what hap­pens on elec­tion day.”

But in the pan­el por­tion pre­ced­ing War­ren’s keynote speech-inter­view, three House mem­bers of the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus talked about the chal­lenges already appar­ent for pro­gres­sive vot­ers giv­en Trump’s admis­sion that a stick­ing point in the recent pan­dem­ic relief nego­ti­a­tions was the Democ­rats’ desire to fund the U.S. Postal Ser­vice to be capa­ble of han­dling the increase in mail-in bal­lots asso­ci­at­ed with Novem­ber’s vote. By being will­ing to not fund the mail ser­vice prop­er­ly, Repub­li­cans have made it less like­ly Trump will leave office.

“This is an attack on our democ­ra­cy,” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Katie Porter (D‑California) said. “And sad­ly it won’t be the last one before we are done with him.”

“If you feel like our democ­ra­cy is under attack, I would tell you, yes, hon­or that feel­ing, and ask your­self, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ ”

Porter sug­gest­ed focus­ing on what’s going on at the coun­ty lev­el to pro­tect elec­tion integri­ty, such as sign­ing up to be a poll work­er, because a solu­tion at the nation­al lev­el is unlike­ly to come.

“We’re going to do what we’ve long had to do, which is orga­nize per­son by per­son, com­mu­ni­ty by com­mu­ni­ty,” Porter said.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bar­bara Lee (D‑California) con­nect­ed the recent doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of remov­ing mail­box­es from urban areas to oth­er activ­i­ties aimed at dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact­ing Black, Indige­nous, and Peo­ple of Col­or (BIPOC).

“It absolute­ly is racist vot­er sup­pres­sion,” Lee said. “It’s also anoth­er form of a poll tax. It also is anoth­er form of try­ing to make sure that peo­ple, espe­cial­ly peo­ple of col­or, are so frus­trat­ed that they just won’t go vote.”

Lee described her expe­ri­ence in 2018’s Geor­gia guber­na­to­r­i­al race where Black vot­ers were made to stand in line for hours after tak­ing a day off from work only to find when they got there their name was­n’t on the rolls anymore.

“In addi­tion to vot­er sup­pres­sion, we know that there’s for­eign inter­fer­ence,” Lee said, which are also tar­get­ing Black and brown com­mu­ni­ties to turn com­mu­ni­ties against each oth­er. Lee preached skep­ti­cism when read­ing things online, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a mes­sage was espe­cial­ly divi­sive, and start from the assump­tion that some­one say­ing it was a bot.

Our own Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal (D‑Washington) fol­lowed up by claim­ing that sim­i­lar activ­i­ty was hap­pen­ing in the phys­i­cal world.

“We already know that there were poseurs brought in to the Black Lives Mat­ter protests in Min­neapo­lis and that some of those peo­ple were paid to come in by con­ser­v­a­tive groups,” Jaya­pal said, mir­ror­ing the more famil­iar right wing talk­ing point about paid left-wing agi­ta­tors being respon­si­ble for move­ment, though in both cas­es, it was­n’t clear where the claim was com­ing from.

All three rep­re­sen­ta­tives, along with inter­view­er Zer­li­na Maxwell, author of “The End of White Pol­i­tics”, expressed opti­mism for pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s selec­tion of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s junior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris, with Maxwell tak­ing a point to dis­agree with those who regard­ed the selec­tion of a Black woman of South Asian her­itage as being a “safe” choice rather than some­thing rad­i­cal and inspir­ing hope.

“In what world is pick­ing a Black woman for your pres­i­den­tial tick­et in a coun­ty where we’ve nev­er had any women win the vice pres­i­den­cy — or the pres­i­den­cy?” Maxwell said. “That’s not the safe choice; that’s the bold choice.”

Lee men­tioned that Har­ris was actu­al­ly born in Lee’s dis­trict in Oak­land, so she knew the sen­a­tor well and helped stump for Har­ris in 2020 Har­ris’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry run, but for Lee, the moment of suc­cess­ful­ly Har­ris join­ing the tick­et con­nect­ed all the way back to Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Shirley Chisholm’s run for pres­i­dent in 1972… a cam­paign which con­vinced Lee to get involved in Chisolm’s cam­paign and ulti­mate­ly into elec­toral pol­i­tics itself.

“I thought then, that was the begin­ning of the end of white pol­i­tics,” Lee said.

Porter focused on Har­ris’s capac­i­ty for growth on pro­gres­sive issues and look­ing for­ward to work­ing with her as a part­ner in the exec­u­tive branch based on Porter’s work with Har­ris while Har­ris was Cal­i­for­ni­a’s attor­ney general.

“We all have a role, every one of us, in shap­ing the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion,” Porter said.

Jaya­pal was elect­ed as the House­’s first Indi­an Amer­i­can woman the same year Har­ris was elect­ed as the sec­ond Black woman and first Indi­an Amer­i­can to the Sen­ate. Jaya­pal detailed how she worked on the plat­form devel­oped by Biden and his major pri­ma­ry rival Ver­mon­t’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders.

“We got sig­nif­i­cant foun­da­tion­al pieces of Medicare For All into this plat­form includ­ing that… any pub­lic option would not be admin­is­tered by pri­vate insur­ance com­pa­nies but would be admin­is­tered by Medicare,” Jaya­pal said, also cit­ing poli­cies like auto­mat­ic enroll­ment into the sys­tem if a per­son lost their job.

For Jaya­pal, the argu­ment was not that most of the Net­roots Nation audi­ence had like­ly con­sid­ered Biden their first choice, or that Har­ris’s track record as pro­gres­sive was espe­cial­ly per­sua­sive, but that they were peo­ple who could be worked with and brought along, as with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic platform.

Like War­ren, the mes­sage was one of being left with a bina­ry choice, and both tried to tamp down expec­ta­tions by remind­ing the audi­ence that being a pro­gres­sive by def­i­n­i­tion means being out ahead of most oth­er peo­ple on some issues.

The speak­ers all men­tioned that they’re sup­port­ing Biden, but the focus of all the con­ver­sa­tion was remov­ing the cur­rent block­age in the White House so that all of the oth­er nec­es­sary work of chang­ing sys­tems to ben­e­fit the major­i­ty of peo­ple could actu­al­ly begin, inside and out­side of politics.

In War­ren’s words: “big, struc­tur­al, change.”

“It is not enough to win the White House,” War­ren said. “We also have to hold the House, we have to take back the Sen­ate, we need to win in states all around this coun­try. We need to put peo­ple at the local lev­el who are pro­gres­sives. We need to put peo­ple in posi­tions where they can enact big, struc­tur­al change.”

Net­roots Nation 2020 con­cludes tomorrow.