SAN FRANCISCO _ Chanting, clapping and promoting a panoply of causes, thousands of Democrats on Saturday turned San Francisco into a boisterous festival dedicated to chasing President Trump from office.
The difference from any other day in this famously liberal bastion was organization and a formal agenda: The gathering was hosted by California's Democratic Party, which attracted 5,000 delegates and guests and a small platoon of presidential hopefuls to its spring convention.
Sen. Kamala Harris, the state's junior senator and a presidential contestant, set the fist-shaking partisan tone when she launched the march of White House contestants.
"Democrats, we have a fight on our hands," she said, "and it's a fight for who we are as a people. It's a fight for the highest ideals or our nation. And Democrats, with this president, it's a fight for truth itself."
She brought delegates to their feet declaring, "We need to begin impeachment proceedings and we need a new commander in chief" _ a view not shared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who spoke a short time earlier.
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, another presidential candidate, followed in a similar Trump-bashing vein, condemning the incumbent as "a president who seeks to divide an already polarized country."
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who drew one of the most enthusiastic receptions of any of the presidential candidates, spoke in trademark detail, laying out several planks in her length policy platform:
"We will break up big ag," she vowed. "We will break up big banks. We will break up big tech. We will make it easier for workers to join in a union."
In one of the few evident swipes at a rival, Warren took issue with former Vice President Joe Biden's assertion that GOP lawmakers may come around to compromise under a new Democratic president.
"Some say if we all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses," Warren said obliquely. "But our country is in a time of crisis."
The partisan crowd cheered loudly.
The gathering was the first since a midterm election in which California Democrats ran the table on statewide offices and gained seven congressional seats, a good chunk of the gains that gave the party control of the House.
The presidential hopefuls were forced to wait well over an hour while half a dozen statewide officers and legislative leaders took turns at the podium.
With so many waiting in the wings, Gov. Gavin Newsom jokingly referred to himself as the undercard when he spoke.
He held up California as the nation's political counterweight to Trump, urging the presidential contestants on hand to pay heed.
"We are nothing less than the progressive answer to a transgressive president," Newsom said. "California's what happens when rights are respected, when work is rewarded, when nature's protected, when diversity is celebrated and free markets are fair markets."
Pelosi, who drew a rapturous response from the hometown crowd, portrayed the Democratic-led House as a central player in a watershed moment of history as it undertakes investigations of the Trump administration.
"We do not place ourselves in the category of greatness of our founders. But we do place ourselves in the urgency that we face in securing the democracy they established," said Pelosi, who wore suffragist white in honor of the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.
As she recapped the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III _ that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and Trump was not exonerated of obstruction allegations _ she pledged that the president "will be held accountable for his actions. In the Congress, in the courts and in the court of public opinion, we will defend our democracy."
The response was repeated calls from the crowd for impeachment.
Outside the downtown convention hall, the sidewalks swarmed with delegates, identifiable not just by their credentials but the T-shirts and buttons promoting favored causes: the right to abortion, universal healthcare, a higher minimum wage, Trump's ouster.
They posed with cardboard cutouts of Pelosi in fashionable sunglasses and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in an all-white pantsuit and clamored for selfies with Harris, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other presidential hopefuls.
Hours before the convention convened at the George R. Moscone Center, named after the city's assassinated mayor, presidential hopefuls made the rounds of different interest groups.
Several of them addressed roughly 150 union activists _ "brothers and sisters" _ gathered for breakfast at a taproom across the street, where they took turns lavishing praise on the labor movement.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar boasted that her grandfather, mom and dad were union members. Sanders touted bills he introduced to raise the national minimum wage and create a government-run universal healthcare system.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee boasted of his state's high minimum wage and its labor-friendly laws, saying they have boosted its strong economy.
"We have blown up the trickle-down myth of Donald Trump and the Republicans," Inslee said.
Harris, also playing to a hometown crowd, name-checked several activists and their work together on issues when she served as the state's attorney general. "I'm all about lifting up people," she said, calling issues of concern to working-class Americans the top priority of her campaign.
At a standing-room-only gathering of the party's women's caucus, Harris pitched herself as a defender of abortion rights and crusader for gender pay equity.
"Let us not despair," she exhorted the crowd. "Let us not ever throw up our hands when it's time to roll up our sleeves."
Harris was greeted warmly as a native daughter, with even simple walks down the convention hall corridors brought to a halt by mobs of fans.
She told reporters she would let others figure out why she trails Biden and Sanders in polls of Californians, noting that she had faced uphill battles in polls in her previous campaigns for San Francisco district attorney and state attorney general _ races she eventually won.
"It's early in the race and we'll see," Harris said.
Biden, who was notably absent Saturday as he campaigned in Ohio, sought to steal a meager slice of the limelight by announcing that he had received the endorsement of Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who served as Labor secretary in the Obama administration.
Delegates in San Francisco also heard from candidates vying to be the state party's next chair in a special election prompted by the resignation of Eric Bauman, who quit last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Kimberly Ellis, a progressive Bay Area activist who lost narrowly to Bauman two years ago, is running again. So are half a dozen other candidates, including Los Angeles labor leader Rusty Hicks, who has garnered endorsements from many prominent elected Democrats in the state, and Vice Chair Daraka Larimore-Hall.
