ST. LOUIS — The Democratic convention that will nominate Hillary Clinton for president is just a week away, but you wouldn’t have known it at the annual Netroots Nation Conference this year.

The buttons sported by attendees and the placards festooned around the convention hall here supported the Black Lives Matter movement or opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Beyond a video message sent to the annual progressive gathering by Clinton, there was little other evidence of her campaign.


The scene at the four-day conference, which ended Sunday, was emblematic of the uneasy truce between Clinton and many of the pro-Bernie Sanders progressives who came for the training sessions and to sit in on panels featuring liberal luminaries like billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. There was little enthusiasm for the presumptive Democratic nominee, only a grim recognition of the need to join together to stop Donald Trump in November.

“I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Hillary,” said Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator and congressional candidate who endorsed Sanders during the primary. “I’ll do the right thing. Trump shouldn’t be responsible for the American people.”

“Of course I’m supporting Hillary,” said Ryan How, a Sanders supporter and English as a second language instructor at Gannon University in Pennsylvania who came with his partner to St. Louis. “What else can I do?”

The lingering bitterness among many activists, candidates and elected officials who backed Sanders wasn’t far from the surface. But in more than a dozen interviews, nearly all of these progressives mentioned the urgency of defeating Trump. They’ll worry about Clinton later.

For most of them, the idea of sitting out the election isn't an option — a promising sign for Democrats who worried that many of Sanders’ supporters might not return to the party fold after the contentious primary.

“Trump is just so bad,” said Netroots Nation Executive Director Raven Brooks. “Everyone recognizes what a clear and present danger he is to the country, and then you look at what’s going on around us; the police are essentially executing black men right now. People just realize that there are more important things to do than fight over a couple of candidates.”

Brooks said about 2,500 people will have shown up throughout the conference, a figure slightly smaller than in years past. As he sat in the cavernous convention space surrounded by booths representing groups ranging from unions to an organization called Drinking Liberally, Brooks reflected on the differences between this moment and eight years ago, when the Democratic Party emerged from another bruising primary process.

“One thing that’s clearly happening — with Black Lives Matter leading the way but other groups too — they’re applying actual pressure to these candidates to include real things in their platforms and actually work for the causes that we’re all working for,” Brooks said.

Progressive changes to the Democratic National Committee platform helped generate some goodwill toward the Clinton campaign, with many activists here pointing to Clinton’s leftward movement on everything from trade to higher education reform. Sanders on Friday said he’d create three new organizations to continue advocating for progressive issues and candidates who he supports.

Clinton — who was booed at the conference in 2007, the only conference she has attended — offered another olive branch Saturday in her video: She committed to a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

“Bottom line is I believe I can work with Hillary Clinton, especially with the wide-awake movement that’s present,” said Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, one of the first elected officials to support Sanders and an appointee to the DNC platform committee. “If we have these young people who are like, ‘It’s not about the person, it is about the platform, it is about the issues,’ and if we can get some unity on the issues, then Clinton has to deal with the issues.”

Rep. Keith Ellison: “Trump is a danger to the republic." | AP Photo

Ellison, who now supports Clinton, also pointed to the prospect of the presumptive GOP nominee.

“Trump is a danger to the republic,” he said.

The experience of President Barack Obama’s historic election — and the ensuing disappointment about his agenda among many progressives — has in some ways worked to Clinton’s advantage. Several activists here said they know now that an attractive and charismatic candidate is not enough. They are learning to live with her because they want to be in a position to hold her feet to the fire when she takes office — in terms of her Cabinet appointments or what she will do during her first month in office. And if Trump captures the White House, they’re going to need to “stop the apocalypse,” as one progressive leader bluntly put it.

The shift from enthusiastically backing Sanders to supporting his rival, however, hasn’t been easy either for progressive leaders or grass-roots activists.

“The feeling is that everyone is going to vote for her,” said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, who couldn’t go f5 feet at Netroots without running into an old pal or some friend from his brother Howard’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Some will work for her, while some will work for other candidates whose thinking they’re more comfortable with.”

Dean, whose organization gave Sanders a massive boost when it endorsed him last December, said he’ll vote for Clinton come November and he hopes the rank-and-file members of DFA do as well — because of Trump.

But, he warned, if young people who came out in droves for Sanders — like Dean’s 23-year-old son — continue to feel estranged from the top of the ticket and stay at home, Democrats from Clinton on down will be in trouble.

“If the disaffected voters don’t vote, that’s a failure of the Democratic Party and the state parties, for how they treated Sanders,” he said.

Greg Connor, a former Sanders volunteer, represents the worst-case scenario for Clinton.

Sitting outside the convention center, Connor was still wearing his "Sanders for President" shirt along with lime-green shorts and a backwards hat. Sanders may have endorsed Clinton but, in Connor’s view, he hasn’t conceded the race. The Democratic National Committee wronged the Vermont senator, the media kept him off the airwaves, and Clinton provokes a visceral sense of dread, because of her “deceit,” he said.

So will he vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee?

“No chance,” he said.