‘Scream night’: Democrats get shouted down by their own activists over climate change

Democrats are scrambling to find their footing in the second Donald Trump era. But for 30 minutes on Thursday night, they struggled even to get through a party meeting.

The final forum of candidates running to lead the Democratic National Committee was derailed at numerous points by climate protesters — a reminder of the fractures still dividing a party reeling from its losses in November.

More than a dozen protesters, primarily affiliated with the Sunrise Movement, repeatedly stopped the DNC forum proceedings throughout the first 30 minutes. After five individual interruptions, six more protesters surged toward the stage, attempting to unfurl a banner, before they were forcibly removed.

The moderators — MSNBC hosts Jen Psaki, Jonathan Capehart and Symone Sanders-Townsend — grew visibly frustrated by the frequent outbursts, even as they readjusted questions to address climate change.

“If anyone else feels the need to disrupt, please stand up and do it right now,” Sanders-Townsend said.

But the protests continued — becoming so distracting that some of the DNC chair candidates vented their annoyance. Jason Paul, a longshot among the eight contenders, accused the protesters of “hijack[ing] the whole evening” and turning “this into scream night at the DNC.”

Paul noted that he’d already signed on to a Sunrise Movement pledge to eliminate fossil fuel donors in Democratic primaries. But the interruptions were a reminder of the kind of protests — coming from some of the party’s own activists — that have frequently disrupted party and campaign events in recent years, as interest groups press on specific policy concerns.

The fourth and final DNC chair event ahead of Saturday’s election largely mirrored the preceding forums, with the candidates broadly agreeing with one another about the need to combat online misinformation, reinvest in state parties and improve the party’s overall branding. The two frontrunners — Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and Ben Wikler, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair — sat next to each other on stage, but they didn’t spar with each other.

When asked about fundraising from high-dollar donors, both Martin and Wikler called for campaign finance reforms. But Martin did not chide Wikler, a prolific fundraiser, for his own closeness to donors, as he’s done in previous forums.

Marianne Williamson, a former Democratic presidential candidate, however, didn’t hold back: “No, Reid Hoffman is not a good billionaire,” she said, referring to a Democratic mega-donor who is close to Wikler. Hoffman had angered some Democrats when he founded a private voter file company, which would have directly competed with state parties.

Both Martin and Wikler also agreed to provide greater transparency in the DNC’s budget, with Martin promising to “break up the consultant industrial complex.”

“I agree with Ken,” Wikler said, drawing laughs and applause. “Let’s start with auditing every consultant contract that we’ve got.”

Others on stage called for a broader reassessment of the party’s problems. Faiz Shakir, a late entrant to the DNC race who ran Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, pushed the party to refocus on economic justice as its organizing principle, pledging to better engage influencers to “tell the stories about people on Medicaid” who are hurt by Trump’s policies.

“I felt like the ideas were not meeting the moment,” Shakir said.

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