IF THE SEVEN presidential candidates who sought a hearing at the "Take Back America" conference were worried about the grand battle between centrists and progressives, most of them didn’t let on. Of the nine candidates, only Florida senator Bob Graham (the most hawkish Dem) and Lieberman (the most fiscally conservative) made their position known by skipping the chance to win over progressives.

Dean was the first presidential hopeful to appear at the conference. Predictably enough, in light of the centrist-progressive spitball fight, he was greeted with great enthusiasm. He was also one of the few candidates who immediately and explicitly took up the thread of the DLC-progressive divide, noting that "Those folks at the DLC are wrong.... We need to stand up against [Republicans] and fight." Dean also promised to repeal all Bush’s tax cuts and make gradual progress to affordable health care for all Americans. "We can do better," the candidate noted.

Dean was a hit among many of the delegates. Virginia-based writer and activist Elizabeth Armstrong Hall e-mailed me her conference postmortem on Monday morning. "On several levels, I was most impressed with Howard Dean," she wrote. "I already knew he had the guts to vote against the Iraq war and supported universal health care. As a candidate, he comes across as articulate, sincere and ‘presidential.’ His message was on target and he didn’t have to pretend to be progressive."

New Hampshire activist Christa Patterson was equally enthusiastic about Dean. "He’s been the best of the lot," she said, citing his blend of progressive politics and blunt talk. In fact, Dean’s blunt talk to all wings of the party (he is unapologetic about his pro-gun sentiments) also mattered to activists such as Patterson — who remained unmoved by Kucinich’s progressive histrionics and kept her seat during numerous standing ovations. "You tell me that there isn’t going to be another Nader," Patterson quipped over applause during Kucinich’s speech, fretting over the rapturous reception accorded his progressive wish list.

Anyone handicapping the 2004 Democratic race — and hoping to avoid progressive spoiling — eagerly awaited a glimpse at how the audience would react to three of the more centrist Democratic candidates: Edwards, Gephardt, and Kerry. These candidates’ approaches to addressing a progressive audience were a study in contrasts. Edwards leaned heavily on making an insider/outsider case against the Bush White House, attacking the president’s promotion of corporate power over people power. "They value wealth, not work," Edwards argued to solid but polite applause. He also attacked Bush’s judicial appointments with vigor. "Some of these judges will take your rights away," the candidate noted to more fervent cheering.

In short, Edwards sought consensus over confrontation — as did Gephardt in a taped address to the conference. Gephardt’s video was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but after Kucinich’s rabble-rousing performance, organizers pushed it to the next morning. "The crowd was on such a high" after Kucinich’s speech, "Take Back America" organizer Roger Hickey told me, explaining why he sent the crowd out to eat barbecue instead of listening to Gephardt’s videotaped statement. On tape, Gephardt touted his far-reaching health-care program and told the conference, "I’m sick of the red and blue map. I want a new map."

The same approach was not taken by Kerry — who came in spoiling for a fight with both the Bush administration and anti-war Democrats. There seemed to be a nervous edge to Kerry’s pitch; at times, he would climb rhetorical heights only to flub the climax. Yet Kerry did score big points with his calls to "get the money out of politics" and to acknowledge the importance of organized labor to the homeland-security effort. He evoked the union status of 9/11’s fire, police, and medical first-responders with a power and pathos that augured well for a possible confrontation with Bush.

Yet if Kerry also hoped to score by pointedly taking on progressives on national security, his efforts fell short. The Massachusetts senator’s attack on the progressives who "reflexively oppose any US military intervention anywhere, or who see US power as mostly a malignant force in the world, or who place a higher value on achieving multilateral consensus" was greeted not with catcalls or boos, but with a polite and reflexive round of mild applause. No one in the audience, it appeared, wanted to extend the political credit of controversy to Kerry’s fishing expedition.

The crowd was more predictably enthusiastic about Kucinich, as well as about former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun and Sharpton. Moseley Braun’s speech deplored the Bush administration’s employment of "the most cynical politics I have seen in my lifetime," and accused Republicans of "using our pain [after 9/11] ... as a smokescreen to advance an extreme political agenda."

Sharpton’s speech followed the delayed Gephardt video on Friday morning, and it was pitched more as a pep rally than as a presidential stump speech. It also had the best laugh lines and the best rallying cry of all the candidates’ speeches. The reverend noted that he wasn’t surprised that Bush couldn’t find Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. "I can’t find the votes in Florida that made him president in the first place," he wisecracked. Sharpton also told the crowd that he was running to "slap the donkey," arguing that if he slapped it hard enough, "I can make it kick George W. Bush out of the White House.

Patterson, the New Hampshire activist, caught up with me after Sharpton’s speech. "I was prepared to be unimpressed," she said. "But it was good."

IN RHETORICAL TERMS, at least, there is little doubt that the progressives who flocked to the "Take Back America" conference can offer a grand critique and renewed passion for debate. As far as practical ideas are concerned, however, the progressive community could stand to do a lot more looking forward in hope — and a lot less looking backward in anger. Indeed, it’s a rare moment in American politics when candidates have more ideas about how to solve problems than activists do. But Dean, Edwards, Kerry, and Gephardt all touted practical means to achieve their goals. Many of the "Take Back America" speakers weren’t nearly as prepared.

The one thing progressive activists can bring to the table in 2004, however, is a reinvigorated base that knows how to exploit cyber-technology for political purposes. One of the conference’s highlights came on the very first day, when MoveOn.com co-founder Wes Boyd recounted the story of the group’s success, from taking on the right over Clinton’s impeachment to publicizing the recent fight over changes in FCC regulations that allow for greater media concentration (see "Mad As Hell," News and Features, June 6). The Web was also put to good use by progressives organizing the massive anti-Iraq-war protests of last fall and winter. When was the last time the DLC mustered 200,000 people to march in the streets?

But too much of the "Take Back America" conference ignored such road maps to the future, and instead stuck to dissecting Bush’s failings. Innovative new policy ideas were not at a premium. Rather, much of the progressive agenda laid out at the conference focused on reaction, rollback, and fond reminiscence of a less dangerous past. For the moment, the plan is simple: oppose Bush’s judicial nominations, roll back his tax cuts, and pretend that almost two years of the White House’s post-9/11 scare tactics haven’t penetrated mainstream America’s psyche. At moments, it seemed impossible not to wonder how the progressive movement tossed away its sackcloth and ashes so quickly. Conservative Republicans spent years in the political wilderness, engaged in a self-critique and rebuilding process that was content with moral victory, modest success, and the gradual erection of a winning platform until they succeeded in taking the White House, Congress, and a solid majority on the US Supreme Court.

Such self-reflection — particularly in light of the progressive movement’s role in inflicting George W. Bush on the American people — was in short supply at the conference. At best, the answer progressives gave was that things in America are so bad that we need only to sharpen our arguments and yell louder.

At worst — such as in speeches by the Reverend Bernice Powell Jackson, executive minister of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries, and by United Steelworkers of America president Leo Gerard — the progressive message traveled back over the "bridge to the 21st century" that Bill Clinton promised to build in his 1996 nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Jackson launched a quintessential "blame America first" salvo, attacking every element of US foreign policy since the 1960s with the ham-fisted rigidity of Noam Chomsky. And Gerard, for his part, steamrolled the nuances of global trade with a display of union bravado — and tactfully omitted the fact that Bush has favored the steel industry as a way of showing off his willingness to flaunt free trade, thus courting labor votes.

Just as the centrists of the DLC kill off potential progressive votes with every jibe and insult hurled at left-liberal candidates or the peace movement — which mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans — progressives won’t make a dent in public discourse until they reassess their legacy. Can progressives heed Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s call at a Thursday national-security panel to make common cause with conservatives who are troubled by Bush’s doctrine of pre-emption and by his administration’s politicization of intelligence gathering? Can organized labor fight to create positive change within NAFTA and the WTO, rather than simply call for their demolition?

In the title of its last salvo at progressives, at least, the DLC may have a point. Democrats do need to talk. But rather than snipe at each other in policy papers and op-eds, they need to exchange ideas in a more constructive and formal setting. The DLC has just announced that its 2003 "National Conversation" will take place in Philadelphia on July 27 and 28. Perhaps the DLC could trim a bit of self-congratulation and glad-handing from its agenda and invite leading progressives such as conference organizer and Campaign for America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage or author Barbara Ehrenreich to engage its members in a serious debate about what’s at stake for the Democratic Party in 2004. Such a joust might jolt the warring wings of the party into recognizing their shared values. It would certainly be more fruitful than the one-sided conversations Democrats — and a few of their presidential hopefuls — are having at the moment.

Richard Byrne can be reached at richardbyrne1@starpower.net