The recent progressive effort to create a left-wing protest movement isn’t challenging incumbent Democratic legislators, according to speakers and attendees at the “Take Back the American Dream Conference” in Washington.
That’s a marked contrast with the tea party, which gained influence because it knocked off established Republicans, such as former Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Mike Castle, while also helping elect conservatives, including Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio and Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul.
Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards was a main speaker on Monday, declaring, “The plan is that we get to define the American dream … we will go out and work harder than we have ever worked.”
However, she declined to urge progressive challenges to incumbent Democratic legislators. “I’m not challenging incumbent Democrats … I’m a progressive, it’s better off to be a progressive Democrat in a House controlled by Democrats than to be in the House” controlled by the GOP, she said. Edwards is a co-chair of the House Democratic Red to Blue program, which is charged with winning seats held by Republicans.
Bob Borosage, a founder of the American Dream coalition, predicted that progressives would run for seats, but only cited two House seats where his progressive allies are vying for the Democratic nomination.
Both those seats are in new districts, and so lack incumbent legislators.
The conference was a morale-boosting event for distressed progressives who see the GOP pulling ahead in polls. On Monday, for example, former White House Van Jones emceed the rollout of a new political coalition, dubbed “The American Dream Movement,” which consists of 30 leaders in already existent progressive groups, large and small. (RELATED: Tea party leaders grapple with ‘Occupy Wall Street’)
Speakers at the conference praised each other and urged attendees to rally against the surging GOP, but few defended President Barack Obama, whose status has plunged along with his polls.
“We’re not going to stand silently while the top 2 percent [of wealthy people] walk away with the American Dream,” Edwards said.
The meeting is “exactly the tonic we need,” declared Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired,” he told the roughly 600 attendees listening to his speech at the Washington Hilton.
