At an event that eschewed Trumpian theatrics for earnest discussion, Democratic heavyweights hoped to prove the party can think big

The Center for American Progress wasn’t hosting a presidential cattle call. Instead, it was an ideas conference, just one that roughly a dozen potential Democratic presidential contenders showed up to on Tuesday.

A mix of Democratic donors and activists gathered in a subterranean hotel ballroom for the event, hosted by the premier center-left thinktank in Washington, for a full day of speakers that began with the senator Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, and the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman discussing the economy and culminated in a keynote speech on democracy from the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren.

Participants included presidential dark horses like Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, and Bernie Sanders. The format varied from free-flowing panels to standalone orations. Event badges boasted: “Big ideas start here.”

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The common thread was that Democratic hopefuls approached the Trump era not with the outrage of #resistance but with a wonky earnestness. Speakers went out of their way to talk about issues like the economy and voting rights instead of Stormy Daniels. On the rare occasions when Russia came up, the focus was on election integrity.

Despite the plethora of would-be candidates there was only the slightest hint of the coming race, when MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar if she was up for election in 2020. Klobuchar said yes before quickly correcting herself to note that her Senate seat was up for election in 2018.

Instead, the event stayed rooted in its earnestness. White papers were heaped on a table by the entrance, on topics ranging from North Korea to universal healthcare coverage. One attendee, Justin Slaughter, a former official in the Obama administration, compared the event to CPAC, a convention for conservatives. He said it served as a “locus of ideas” for progressives and spoke favorably of the Democratic party “getting out of its defensive crouch” and exploring bolder policy solutions.

Kate Nelson of Los Angeles had come not to see presidential hopefuls but for a policy debate, and said the event was a rebuke “for those who think Democrats don’t have ideas”.

But unlike CPAC, which is set in a vast ballroom and brings in thousands over three days, from rowdy college students looking to party to veteran political consultants looking to drum up business, this ideas conference was far more restrained.

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Several hundred attendees sat around tables in the ballroom, a handful of which were marked reserved. They were served lunch of either roasted chicken or eggplant. If they had to excuse themselves, signs pointed the way to gender-neutral bathrooms. They sat politely listening to speaker after speaker in the darkened room, with only occasional cheers and rounds of applause.

The mood shifted slightly from speaker to speaker, all of whom played to type. Bernie Sanders, hunched over the podium which he gripped with two hands, delivered an attack on “the multi-billionaires”, including Jeff Bezos, as he railed against income inequality and the oligarchy.

Kirsten Gillibrand, in a panel about “Women’s Power”, joked: “If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters we might not have had the financial collapse.” And Cory Booker, roaming the stage, repeatedly cited data points about “the moral sin of poverty” as well as the economic toll, arguing the total cost of child poverty in the United States was over $1tn.

The only speaker to break new ground was Elizabeth Warren, who announced that she was having her campaign spend $175,000 on Democratic efforts to take back state legislatures as well as a three point proposal to increase ethical requirements for federal officeholders including a lifetime lobbying ban.

Yet, even this new proposal was met with some restraint in a sober audience of policy wonks. Throughout the day, the loudest cheers may have been for a Parkland survivor who said that he was delaying college in order to turn out youth voters for the midterm elections.