In his address this morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump did what Trump does: blather about kicking “bad dudes” out of the country, bluster about the budget, ramble on about fake news and promise to open up vast new swaths of the country to fossil fuel extraction. It’s horrifying, but it’s also – at this point – starting to get boring. We know Trump.

“All I’ve done is keep my promise,” he thundered. And he’s right. Trump is the same bigoted billionaire he was on the campaign trail, even as his most audacious pledges – like his ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries – have been struck down by courts and massive protests. The people worth understanding now are the ones in the crowd today who helped elect him.

Trump’s base is the same one that has been showing up to CPAC for years, and the one that has cheered him on in his last several visits to the conference. His presidency is not owed to some mythical and much-theorized bloc of white working class voters, but to the NRA members and evangelicals he made sure to give shout-outs to before leaving the stage. Perhaps most importantly, Trump owes his seat in the Oval Office to the organizers who have primed the Republican base for years to be receptive to his brand of vitriolic nationalism.

In this, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s theatrics. “The media didn’t think we would win,” he told the crowd. “Consultants didn’t think we would win. The people proved them wrong.”

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While Trump’s far-right populism has won over plenty of converts, his success is a testament to the power of conferences like CPAC, featuring whole workshop tracks devoted to letting conservative activists sharpen their tools.

Linking Your Way to Victory: Facebook Recruiting, a session held on the conference’s first day, likely did not focus heavily on Republican ideology. It may not have echoed Trump’s call today for immigration officials to find “gang members, drug dealers and illegal aliens and [throw] them the hell out of our country”.

Like other sessions at this years conference, though, it taught Republican organizers all they need to know: how to grow their base and bring new people into their fold. That Trump spoke this morning in terms of movements, then, was no exaggeration. It is because of events like CPAC – not Trump’s speeches – that Democrats should have seen his victory coming from a mile away.

As he said this morning, “Never underestimate the people.” Especially when they organize, as the Republicans have been doing at every level of government since the advent of the Tea Party and well before.

Not unlike his campaign, Trump’s speech on Friday morning was catnip for movement conservatism – the people who chanted “lock her up” today, and will return on Monday to their communities and college campuses armed with new skills, passion and relationships.

This is all a really good reminder that progressives need their own CPAC. We need a place to equip organizers with hard skills and analysis, to give up-and-coming party stars a place to shine, and to show elected officials what they will be held accountable to by their base. We do anything else to our own risk.