The grassroots left has renewed political relevance with President Donald Trump in office, and some organizers say the opposite occurred under former President Barack Obama.
A number of progressive activists described their conflicts with the Democratic Party, including Obama, in a Rolling Stone report published Thursday. The former community organizer turned president exemplified "establishment thinking" in the eyes of activists who want the Democrats to follow the grassroots left.
"What happened when Obama won?" asked Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal Daily Kos. "We all went home."
"The approach he took, there was no real role for people," prominent organizer Marshall Ganz said of Obama's leadership once in the White House.
Ganz touted the work of Indivisible, a community organizing group that has gathered a wide range of followers after it published "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda."
"The fact that Indivisible is rooted outside of the Democratic Party is an enormous strength," Ganz said. "They can develop their own agenda. They can be the ones exercising influence over Congress, the Senate, or the presidency—which is something the Obama organization could not do because it was owned by Obama."
"That's actually ideal: Let the party piggyback off that popular wave rather than the other way around," Moulitsas added.
Indivisible has not to date been successful electing candidates to office, but it has taken credit for stymying Republicans' legislative agenda.
"Through months of relentless local pressure," said Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, "Indivisible groups and other volunteer advocates convinced Democrats to play political hardball—and peeled off enough Republicans to sink the [GOP's Obamacare repeal] bill."
Rolling Stone highlighted various left-wing grassroots organizations attempting to organize independently, including Swing Left, Run for Something, and Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I., Vt.) Our Revolution. Our Revolution's president, Nina Turner, has made confronting the Democratic Party a cornerstone of her leadership, and even called party leaders "pompous and arrogant."
"Resistance is good," Turner said. "But we have to go further than that. We have to plan for when power is back in the hands of progressives."
To accomplish that goal, she has put together a "people's platform" that demands a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for all. When she brought a petition with 115,000 signatures to the Democratic National Committee headquarters, she was met with barricades, which she said is "indicative of what is wrong with the Democratic Party."
"This ain't about fancy slogans on the way to 2018," Turner said through a megaphone outside DNC headquarters. "We need a new New Deal!"
All of these groups are united around the philosophy that they should work outside the Democratic Party, but they are still fighting for a seat at the table. Indeed, some of these groups do not even see themselves as primarily reforming the Democratic Party but rather helping them overcome Republican majorities at the state and federal level.
"We don't want to be relitigating the Bernie vs. Hillary thing," Ethan Todras-Whitehill of Swing Left said. His organization helps people find swing districts near them in order to help the Democratic candidate win, and they do not plan on requiring ideological purity from Democrats.
"We need to get behind whoever emerges as nominees in swing districts," Todras-Whitehill said. "They are part of our best chance to put a check on Donald Trump by taking back a branch of Congress."
Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the energy they see and channel it into partnership with progressive organizers.
"The energy is palpable," DNC chairman Tom Perez said about the left's grassroots. "They push us—as they should! They all want the Democratic Party to succeed."
Indivisible's founders model their organizing on the Tea Party movement that did much to stifle Obama's agenda. To right the wrongs of the Obama administration, the progressive grassroots seek to have the kind of impact the Tea Party had, and some think they are.
"The scale of the activity, the energy behind it is comparable to—if not more than—what was going on with the Tea Party back in 2009," Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol said.