CHICAGO (AP) — President Joe Biden would seem like an unnatural fit for activists at Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of progressives that was created to tap into online anger about the George W. Bush administration. More recently, he has championed the economic populism message of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two of Biden’s rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
But antipathy toward Democrats deemed too mainstream or moderate did not extend largely to Biden at the group’s recent conference in Chicago. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, even concluded the event by explaining how she had become Biden.
“When it was Biden, I was like, ‘Oh, man,'” said Jayapal, D-Wash., lamenting that Sanders and Warren fell short in the presidential primary. “But I have to tell you, I’m a Biden fan now.”
That drew applause, which was no easy feat considering that pro-Palestinian activists had moments earlier booed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., on the same stage.
In past Netroots conferences, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was booed and Black Lives Matter protesters disrupted a presidential candidate forum in 2016. Biden, as vice president, was upset by the immigration policies of the Obama administration.
Jayapal’s comments signal Biden’s progress in winning over the left wing of his party, an important part of the coalition he is counting on to win a second term. Many progressives have applauded sharp increases in federal spending on major social programs and green energy, as well as Biden’s revamped plan to provide student debt relief after the Supreme Court struck down his original efforts .
“This is not someone who spent the first term doing all kinds of reprehensible things,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a veteran of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign who also helped progressive Brandon Johnson win election as mayor of Chicago this spring. “I think the sense is that he’s had a far more successful, impactful and consequential presidency than progressives expected.”
Similar sentiments have been echoed by Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Warren, D-Mass. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recently endorsed Biden’s 2024 campaign. Some, however, remain angry that Biden failed to follow through on other big promises, including reducing fossil fuel production, advancing an overhaul of the federal police and expanding voting rights.
“The narrative of the Biden administration’s accomplishments is smoke and mirrors,” said India Walton, a progressive who defeated Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in the 2021 Democratic primary but lost to him. in the general elections.
Walton complained that Biden had not done more to protect abortion and civil rights after Supreme Court rulings that weakened both. He also noted that student debt will continue to deal crushing financial blows to millions of people, even with Biden’s attempted remedy.
“We haven’t ‘rebuilt better,'” Walton said, referring to Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan. “And it’s very frustrating to be a working-class American and be fed this ‘blue vote’ narrative, when the real conditions of our everyday lives are not changing.”
That backlash could hurt Biden in 2024, as he is likely to face a challenge from the left — progressive activist Cornel West is mounting a Green Party bid — and could be squeezed from the center — the political group No Labels is trying to recruit a person. centrist candidate
That means even small erosions of progressive energy for Biden could erase the slim margins that critical swing states like Arizona and Georgia gave him in 2020.
One factor that could neutralize these threats is that Donald Trump, the early Republican favorite, could once again be Biden’s opponent in the general election. In 2020, some hesitant progressives were so dismayed by Trump that they voted for Biden despite their deep reservations.
But it may be difficult to reassemble the same broad bloc of voters that put Biden in the White House if some elements are motivated more by fear of Trump than enthusiasm for Biden. This group includes most college graduates, women, urban and suburban residents, young people, and black Americans.
“I think people are unclear about what they really got for that vote,” DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director of the progressive Center for Popular Democracy, said of some Biden supporters from 2020.
Cooper said Biden and top Democrats need to do a better job “sending messages about what really happened.” Referring to opposition to Trump’s candidacy, he said, “There’s going to be a motivational factor. And I don’t think we should assume that people are just going to turn out for the same reason.”
Biden acknowledged the importance of becoming even reluctant progressives in 2020, when he told that year’s Netroots virtual conference in a taped address: “I need you so much.”
The president, who was in Europe and then at Camp David during the group’s recent meeting, has not made such requests this year. His campaign was barely mentioned in panel discussions, speeches, training sessions and after-hours parties. At the same time, relatively little attention was paid to West or No Labels, or to Biden’s nominal Democratic opponents, anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. and self-help author Marianne Williamson.
Ganapathy said progressive support for Biden runs deeper than simply trying to thwart Trump once again.
“There’s a lot that this president and this administration can stand for in terms of their record,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a ‘Don’t vote for this guy.'”
Not everyone is convinced.
Anabel Mendoza, a 25-year-old media relations professional from Chicago who recently moved to California, said Biden “made a lot of promises, but a lot of them haven’t been kept and I think it could be bolder.”
“There’s a lot at stake in this country, and the younger generations feel it,” Mendoza said, pointing to slow federal progress on fighting climate change and gun violence, as well as on immigration, an issue on which he to say that Biden “held his own.” You put a lot of Trump policies in there and that’s something I totally disagreed with.”
But Mendoza also said that “nowhere in the world will I ever go for Trump.”
“When I go out to vote for a candidate, it might not be the candidate that has everything I want,” he added.
Walton has similar sentiments. “As much as I’d like to sit this one down and prove a point,” he said, he will vote Democratic in 2024.
“I’m not going to vote and give the country four more years of Donald Trump?” Walton asked. “Absolutely not.”
Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive activist organization MoveOn, said Biden “used the first two years of his administration to pass some of the most progressive and people-centered policies we could have ever dreamed of.”
He said Biden isn’t a “movement candidate,” but he doesn’t have to be a star on the left for progressives to beat him in 2024.
“When push comes to shove, they’re going to vote for Joe Biden,” Epting said. “For stability, for someone who governs for the people, whatever was left on the table in the last cycle of Congress.”
