Free Republic

A few days before President Trump’s Twitter rant against four congresswomen of color, a few thousand progressives gathered in Philadelphia to hear speakers exhort them to make race a central issue in the 2020 election. “We’ve got to center racial justice,” Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change, told the Netroots Nation conference. Robinson told the audience that “racial justice is a strategy for gaining power and winning power.” Robinson represents a left wing of the party that wants to confront Trump’s demagoguery on race and identity head on, not shying away from the topic. “Democrats for years...

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that she probably loves the United States more than natural born U.S. citizens.Omar came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia."Something that I get criticized for all the time. It's not what you think, so don't gasp," Omar said at the Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia on Saturday during a panel discussion titled, A Vision for Progressive Foreign Policy in the 2020 Elections and Beyond. “It is that I am anti-American because I criticize the United States.” Omar continued, "I believe, as an immigrant, I probably love this country more than anyone...

FULL TITLE: Abortion activist uses watermelon to glorify 'easy' abortion procedure: 'Thank you for watching our abortion' In an act solely meant to glorify abortion, an abortion activist participating at the Netroots Nation conference on Friday used a watermelon to demonstrate how abortion clinicians abort unborn children 11 to 12 weeks old. Abortion clinic consultant Jen Moore Conrow provided attendees with the step-by-step early pregnancy abortion process, according to the Washington Times. Conrow claimed the procedure takes 3-5 minutes and leaves women feeling "OK afterward." Ironically, she did not perform the abortion process herself, but rather left that task to...

The headline-grabbing Democratic infighting between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the high-profile progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), D-New York, must be bringing joy to President Donald Trump and the GOP. After all, a divided Democratic party would be a great boon to Trump's 2020 reelection bid. And clearly Trump wants to fan the flames of that divide, as we saw with his racist tweets Sunday morning, in which he wrote that he wanted AOC and her closest allies in the House -- Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, who are black, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, who is...

<p>In rarely seen angle on the Black Lives Matter mob takeover of a NetRoots Nation Presidential Town Hall last weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, activists from the group scream explicit calls for violence and chaos, using an Occupy Wall Street style call-and-response technique to advocate “burn everything down,” “shut this shit down,” and “rise the fuck up.”</p>

For years, the right has been frustrated by the left’s ability to unite various interest groups successfully as a force. The right hasn’t had as much success, with factions calling each other RINOs and lecturing about Reagan’s 11th Commandment. Now, it looks like the left’s ability to work together is finally unraveling. It is happening because the left has become increasingly obsessed with identity politics, labeling everyone in groups and stereotypes instead of as individuals. As we all learned from history, grouping people by race resulted in terrible things like slavery. It is unsustainable, as it breeds resentment toward other...

The Democratic front-runner was booed at this liberal gathering in 2007. And this year, a no-show has the base equally unimpressed. The annual Netroots Nation conference has attracted thousands of liberal activists, the core of the Democratic Party's base, to the 100-degree-plus desert heat. It attracted its latest hero, Elizabeth Warren. It has attracted two Democratic presidential candidates. But someone it could not attract was Hillary Clinton, the person most likely to need its attendees' help at the top of next November's ballot. "Major unforced error. Showing up is important," said Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — There’s no love lost for any of the 2016 Republican presidential contenders at the 2015 Netroots Nation confab, but attendees reserve a special kind of loathing for one candidate in particular: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. It’s an understandable sentiment given the setting. This year’s edition of the annual convention of liberal activists is heavily focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, with a strong union presence. The AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association have booths set up near the center of the convention hall, and many of the other booths are focused on one...

Attendees of a major conference of left-wing activists this week are being asked not to rape other attendees, according to conference materials posted online. “We want our attendees to have a great time, but please remember that sexual consent is always essential,” advises a program handed out to attendees of the 2015 Netroots Nation conference. The conference, which will kick off in Phoenix, Ariz., this week, features some of the nation’s leading Democratic politicians and liberal activists. The note about sexual consent appears in a portion of the program advising attendees of the conference’s “safe space policy.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D.Idiot) said Saturday his first act as president will be asking World Cup champion and Donald Trump antagonist Megan Rapinoe to be the Secretary of State. Inslee was speaking at the liberal Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia when he touted Rapinoe as someone who could unite the United States and other countries around the world. "President Trump has done a lot of damage to our international reputation through his approach to foreign policy. A Daily Kos user, Mr. Rochester, would like to hear more from you about what you might do differently in your approach to...

PHILADELPHIA — Rep. Rashida Tlaib stood firm in her conviction that President Trump will be impeached while speaking to an audience of liberals Saturday. “We’re going to impeach the MF’er, don’t worry!” she said to huge applause at Netroots Nation, echoing a line from January that drew criticism for its profanity. “I will not back down impeaching this lawless president. He will not be above the law and get away with it on my watch,” the Michigan Democrat said. “Stay strong. Stay strong on this. If we don’t call him out, if we don’t push for this … who is...

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, suggested Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hurt the progressive cause when she downplayed the influence of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other freshman lawmakers. Pelosi told The New York Times last week that Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., "have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.” “I don’t think those comments were helpful to a broader picture of how we build progressive power...

The border crisis appears to have inched the Democratic Party towards another episode of internal strife. Civil war? Well, I’m not so sure about that, but it’s been getting pretty nasty. The House passed a $4.6 billion border package that included strings attached, aimed at curbing immigration enforcement. This was pie-in-the-sky. Trump would never sign it, though he did sign the Senate bill into law, which provided the same funding but without the trash provisions against enforcing the law. It was also overwhelmingly bipartisan. Moderate House Democrats and Pelosi signed off on the Senate bill, which infuriated the far left....

Obama in a dress is really off to a great start, spending a lot of money on planning her presidential campaign, while strongly hinting that anyone who isn't on board is a racist. Sen. Kamala Harris accused critics of “identity politics” of weaponizing the term to diminish issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, pressing Democrats on Friday to address those issues head on. “I have a problem, guys, with that phrase, ‘identity politics,’” Harris told the progressive gathering Netroots Nation, wading into a messaging debate roiling Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. “Because let’s be clear, when people say...

Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris blasted critics of "identity politics," saying that those who use the phrase are attempting to "marginalize issues that impact all of us." Speaking Friday at the Netroots Nation event in New Orleans, Harris implored her supporters to instead fully address the issues of race and gender. "Let’s be clear," Harris told the crowd. "When people say [identity politics], it’s a pejorative. That phrase is used to divide, and it is used to distract. Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us. It is used to try and shut us up.”...

Here is the Founder of the “Netroots Nation” gathering – Markos Moulitsas – telling Chuck Todd that in the 2020 Presidential Campaign, Democrats must embrace “Socialism” or be “irrelevant.” He even said “Donald Trump doesn’t want his taxes to go up – but everyone else kinda does.” Moulitsas also said of Republicans, “They will be calling us Communists before it’s over with.” Well, yeah! Socialism? Tax increases on everyone? So this will be the message of the Democrats in 2020? The 2020 Democrat Presidential Nomination Battle is going to be a thing to behold! Bring it on!

Senator Cory Booker, who is one of the Democrats contending for his party's 2020 nomination for president, is pleading political negligence, claiming that he didn't bother to read a sign that he allowed himself to be photographed holding.  Booker, who has raised considerable money from pro-Israel Jewish groups, apparently got carried away with intersectional enthusiasm at the Netroots Nation confab and was unable to get a clue from the t-shirt on the woman standing next to him that proclaimed Palestine's virtue in the realm of "feminist/queer refugee racial justice" that he might be endorsing a radical point of view. The...

One of President Trump's most vocal critics in the U.S. Senate said Friday that he once cried “tears of rage” over the Trump administration’s rhetoric. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., made the remark at the Netroots Nation Conference in New Orleans, where other liberal speakers were to include U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. The annual convention drew thousands of liberal activists and offered a chance for Democrats considering presidential runs to win over supporters, the Washington Times reported.

Speaking Friday at a historically black university, potential Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren delivered what she called “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … I mean front to back.” The Massachusetts senator identified some of the system’s failures: disproportionate arrests of African-Americans for petty drug possession; an overloaded public defender system; and state laws that keep convicted felons from voting even after their sentences are complete. Warren was participating in a Q&A session hosted by Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond at the historically black Dillard University in New Orleans. She was among several possible Democratic...

For years, Netroots Nation has been criticized for being a near all-white gathering of progressives; the very progressives that lecture everyone about inclusiveness and racism. While accusing others of tone-deafness, the 2017 Netroots conference continues to do what it does best: stay very liberal, Democrat, and white.