PHOENIX — With Bernie Sanders drawing huge crowds with his fiery socialist-y speeches, Hillary Clinton leaning further left than any Democratic frontrunner in decades, and Martin O’Malley pitching himself as the wonk of the people, it’s been an all-out contest in the Democratic Party to claim the mantle of progressive hero.

But on Friday, Elizabeth Warren wanted to make one thing clear: I was the original.


The Massachusetts senator’s speech to the activists gathered here for the annual Netroots Nation convention pushed all the usual progressive buttons: She called for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and reducing college loan debt, hailed recent victories on same-sex marriage and health care, and said that any serious presidential candidate would have to fight against undue influence in Washington’s corridors of power, earning huge cheers from the crowd.

But, unusually for Warren, she also went after her villains by name, ridiculing former Sen. Scott Brown as a diet-pill salesman, Sarah Palin as a YouTube hack, and the Republican field as cowards paralyzed – if not entranced – by the rise of a certain real estate tycoon and reality TV star.

“House Republicans may still want to fly the Confederate flag and Republican leaders may cower in the shadow of Donald Trump, but the American people understand that black lives matter and America is not a country that stands for racism, bigotry or hatred,” Warren said.

And while she didn’t say anything about any of the Democratic presidential contenders, Warren did lay out one requirement for the next occupant of the White House: Don’t appoint anyone I wouldn’t approve of.

“I think anyone running for that job – anyone who wants the power to make every key economic appointment and nomination across the federal government – should say loud and clear that they agree: We don’t run this country for Wall Street and mega corporations. We run it for people,” she said.

"Anyone who wants to be president should appoint only people who have already demonstrated they are independent, who have already demonstrated that they can hold giant banks accountable, who have already demonstrated that they embrace the kind of ambitious economic policies that we need to rebuild opportunity and a strong middle class in this country,” she said.

Warren also laid down a specific marker on economic regulation, saying that the reforms enacted after the 2007-2008 financial crisis didn’t go far enough.

“Progressives believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher legal enforcement – and that, five years after Dodd-Frank – it’s time to stop pretending and really end ‘too big to fail’ with rules like the Glass-Steagall Act,” Warren said, emphasizing the word “end.”

The grassroots campaign that tried to draft Warren into running for president was ultimately a failure, but her ongoing impact on the race is undeniable. Netroots denizens often described themselves as members of the “Elizabeth Warren wing” of the Democratic Party, and Warren’s speech was met with loud, enthusiastic cheers from the large crowd.

Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, has picked up the liberal torch from Warren, and, like a tractor beam reeling in a passing spaceship, the two of them have pulled Clinton to the left on social and economic issues. And while Clinton has declined to support Sanders’ and Warren’s call for a revival of the Glass-Steagal Act, just four days earlier, she delivered a major economic policy speech focused on raising wages for middle-class Americans and even jabbed at President Barack Obama for not doing enough to curtail Wall Street, two signature Warren tropes.

At Netroots, attendees wearing pro-Sanders buttons are everywhere, and there’s a visible wariness toward Clinton – though not quite an overt hostility. Activists at the convention, many of them quick to note that Netroots is for “Bernie’s people,” say that Clinton hasn’t quite won them over even with her recent populist turn.

Clinton’s decision to skip the convention did not go unnoticed, either, especially a day before Sanders is scheduled to deliver his speech in a room designed to fit more than 10,000 people.

“It’s very notable that she’s not here,” Dan O’Neal, the Arizona state coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America, said, adding that even though the former secretary of state had been invited, “she declined to come. Martin O’Malley’s going to be here. Why shouldn’t she be here? We’re saying, ‘Hillary, where are you?’” (For the record, she’s in Iowa.)

“I just want to say that anybody who wants to really speak to the progressive base ought to be here and I’ll let people make their own assumptions,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) , a co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Even if many other Democrats here are not yet sold on Clinton, it’s clear the former secretary of state’s recent leftward lurch has been appreciated.

Pamela Powers Hannley, co-chair of the Arizona Democratic Progressive Caucus, described how she was encouraged by Sanders and Clinton “trying to gain some sort of progressive credibility.”

“We haven’t had really two candidates running – and you could say maybe Hillary’s pretending to be a progressive – but you don’t have them pretending to run as a progressive since the liberal movement and Teddy Roosevelt ran as progressives. So that’s an opportunity,” Hannley said.

“My concern with her has been her Wall Street connections, but I was impressed with her speech the other day when she would have favored more regulation and things like that on Wall Street, and so I’m not declared either way,” Hannley said.

“I think we’ve seen progress,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “I do think that she’s made some stabs toward economic populism.”

But, she added, “I do think missing Netroots Nation was an unforced error.”