This week, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced that a petition it launched calling for the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee to campaign on a populist platform has been signed by 5,000 current and former elected leaders, as well as Democratic Party officials, union leaders, and progressive activists. These include twenty-five members of Congress, such as Senator Harry Reid, Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, and Barbara Lee, plus former Representative Tom Harkin. The petition—which was posted below a page header that reads ReadyforBoldness.com, and rides above a shooting star—begins, “We want the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee to campaign on big, bold, economic-populist ideas that tangibly improve the lives of millions of Americans.”

Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for similarly big, bold, economic-populist ideas, from a podium at Gracie Mansion. On Thursday, de Blasio announced that he, with a coalition of progressives he had convened, would in May put forward a template for how best to conquer inequality, and then ask presidential candidates to respond. (He said it would parallel the GOP’s 1994 Contract for America.) De Blasio and his allies in the project, progressive activists and lawmakers including Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut, offered no specific policy suggestions, but spoke of their “vision.” The mayor talked of changing the national conversation, of “making sure income inequality is at the forefront of the national discussion.” A reporter asked if Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, had been involved in the gathering. De Blasio replied that her team had not been a part, but that he expected every candidate, including Clinton—were she to decide to run, he was careful to say—to speak to the matter.