(Washington Examiner) – The Bernie people lined up in long, triple-deep columns in a cavernous room at the Pennsylvania Convention Center Monday afternoon, waiting to hear Bernie Sanders tell them what he would do. Of course they knew he endorsed Hillary Clinton a couple of weeks ago, but now that they were all in the same place together and feeling powerful — and filled with outrage over the DNC WikiLeaks disclosures — many seemed to wish they could turn back the clock.
After they finished chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” I went down the line asking what they would like to hear Bernie say when he addressed the Democratic convention Monday night, a few miles south at the Wells Fargo Arena.
“I want him to say he’ll continue running,” said one. “That he’ll not concede but continue.”
“I’d like him to say he’s still in the race,” said another.
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“I want to hear him say he is not releasing his delegates,” said another.
“I want to hear him say that we’re fighting on for our democracy,” said another.
Near the end of a line, I asked a woman who answered, “I would like to hear Bernie say that the superdelegates have flipped and he is going to be the nominee.”
“But what if that’s not actually the case?” I said.
“Well, you asked what I wanted to hear him say,” she said with a smile.
A short time later, they were inside Ballroom A, and when Bernie spoke, some ended up booing their hero. They didn’t boo, of course, when Sanders outlined his “bold progressive agenda” and recounted the victories and votes he racked up in the primary and caucus season. The boos came when Sanders declared, “We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.”
Just the mention of Hillary Clinton has prompted boos all across Philadelphia in the last few days. Some hardcore Bernie people have even indulged in the same “Lock her up!” chant heard at the Republican convention in Cleveland.
The crowd In Ballroom A stayed noisy for quite a while, and finally Bernie said, “Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in.”
It was probably the first time in the race that Bernie asked something of his followers, and they answered, in effect, “Hell, no.” That led to a lot of punditry to the effect that Sanders “lost control” of his delegates. But what the moment showed was that Sanders never really controlled them in the first place. He couldn’t command the Revolution.
Were emotions high? Outside, on the corner — it was near 100 degrees — a Bernie supporter, a man, was screaming at two women who supported Clinton. “If you think you are going to get away with stealing this nomination, you’ve got another thing coming!” the man yelled, right in their faces. Walking away, he screamed, “You are so full of s—t!”
There’s no question the Bernie people are noisy. The question is whether they really matter much in general election politics at this point. Some veteran Democratic strategists dismiss Sanders die-hards as “the crazies” and note that they make up a relatively small part not just of the the Democratic coalition but even of the Sanders cohort.
They point to a new release of research by Pew showing that the vast majority of Bernie supporters will eventually vote for Clinton. “Despite a sometimes contentious primary process,” Pew wrote in a report released Monday, “support for Clinton in the general election is high among even the 20 percent of Democratic voters who consistently backed Sanders through the primary and caucus season: Among this group, just 8 percent prefer Trump in the general election, while 90 percent favor Clinton.”
The Wall Street Journal and NBC asked the question differently and found that 76 percent of Sanders supporters will back Clinton, while 11 percent will back Trump, and 13 percent will back neither.
“The people here [at the convention] are the most dedicated of dedicated Sanders’ supporters,” said a Democratic strategist quite friendly to the Sanders cause. “They are understandably pissed about some of the revelations that came out in the recent DNC email leak. Their booing makes for some messy optics, but ultimately the polling doesn’t show that there’s any sort of intra-party revolt.”
After Sanders’ speech, the harder-edged of his supporters headed to City Hall to begin a march they said would stretch all the way to Wells Fargo Arena. (They got there, but some made the trip much easier by taking the subway.) Many were part of Bernie’s hippie legions, in tie-dye and man-buns and holding signs and chanting things like “We are the 99 percent!”
I asked a woman if she planned to march all the way to Wells Fargo. “I plan to march all the way to the nomination,” she said. Her friend picked it up, saying, “I’m gonna march until Bernie is president!” Sensing a riff coming on, he shouted, “I’m gonna march until there’s a $15 minimum wage!” and “I’m gonna march until there’s healthcare for all!” And so on.
Imagine if, at the Republican convention, Ted Cruz’s supporters marched through the streets of Cleveland in tie-dye and man-buns and holding signs and chanting some sort of strict-constitutionalist slogans. The Democratic convention is a different world altogether.
Back at the Marriott, I ran into a Hillary delegate from California. I asked her whether she thought things would quiet down once Bernie delivered his speech. “I don’t know,” she said. “The Bernie people were really bad in California this morning” — a reference to the delegation’s group breakfast.
A few minutes later, I happened upon Eric Bauman, the vice-chair of the California Democratic Party and chair of the Los Angeles County Democrats. I asked him whether the Bernie people had been raucous at his breakfast. “I would say excited,” Bauman answered.
That was a diplomatic way to put it. A Los Angeles Times report on the breakfast was headlined “Angry Sanders delegates drown out California speakers” and said “Sanders supporters waved ‘Bernie or Bust’ signs and chanted Sanders’ name whenever a speaker mentioned Clinton.”
“There are a couple of hundred Bernie delegates, and some of them are 100 percent with Bernie all the way until Thursday night when Hillary accepts the nomination, and maybe beyond,” Bauman told me. “There are going to be some people who are always going to believe that the system was rigged, and for them, it’s going to be a very hard time, and it’s going to take us a while.”
At mid-afternoon Monday, Bernie sent a text to supporters asking that they “not engage in any kind of protest on the floor.”
No such luck. From almost the very beginning of the convention’s first session Monday, Bernie supporters booed whenever any speaker had the temerity to mention Hillary Clinton or Tim Kaine. “May I just make a point?” Rep. Marcia Fudge, chair of the convention, said amidst the booing. “I want to hear the varying opinions here. I am going to be respectful of you, and I want you to be respectful of me.”
It was a nice sentiment, but it seemed the only Bernie supporters who remained quiet were the ones who had put blue duct tape over their mouths, on which they wrote “Silenced by the DNC.”
Then there was a change; as early evening gave way to prime time, the crowd became less surly. When Bernie took the stage, following a lackluster speech by Elizabeth Warren, the applause went on and on and on. It took him forever to get through the first paragraph.
Bernie took a long time to get to the money graph, but after discussing the nation’s economic progress out of the Great Recession, he said, straightforwardly: “By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that — based on her ideas and her leadership — Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States.”
There. It was done. A day of venting had ended when the revolutionary, losing candidate did what he had to do.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-at-dnc-a-day-and-a-night-for-bernie-people-to-vent/article/2597696
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