Those who have run for the party’s nomination in the past have largely hailed from one of two perches: insurgents or establishment types. Warren’s candidacy is a synthesis of the two. She has spent decades operating in elite institutions from Harvard to the Obama administration to the halls of Congress. But she is also the first true candidate of the Netroots era of the Democratic Party, in which wonkiness and unapologetic progressivism are both regarded as unimpeachable political virtues. [...]
The Democratic Party has had candidates closely associated with online activism before. Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign was fueled by a nascent Internet culture that was, in retrospect, the first true iteration of the so-called blogosphere. Barack Obama took concepts of community organizing and applied them to emerging social media channels to fuel his rise. And Bernie Sanders built a small dollar online donor network that has far surpassed anything previously constructed in electoral politics. [...]
Warren may not be the preferred candidate for all of these individuals or others whose roots are in the era of blogging. Indeed, many veterans of the early Netroots era have gone on to work for other presidential candidates or media outlets or political entities that simply won’t play in the 2020 primary. But her rise does represent the remarkable degree to which Democratic politics has shifted from a place where insurgents were seen as pesky naifs and political outsiders to one where they run the show.
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