Bernie Sanders Leaves the Fight. But Do the Sanders-nistas?

July 26, 2016

Bernie Sanders texted his supporters in Philadelphia, Monday afternoon:

"I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor," wrote Sanders in a text message. "Its of utmost importance you explain this to your delegations."

Except the whole theme of the Bernie Sanders campaign was that he wasn't the boss of these supporters. The campaign wasn't about his whim and will, and this was a collective effort, not a top-down, hierarchal one.

The campaign boasted, "Bernie has said it since day one: this campaign is not about him, it's about you."

If that's really the case, it's not just up to him to decide to accept Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, to forgive the Democratic National Committee for their heavy-handed meddling in the primary, and to fall in line in the general election against Trump.

Unsurprisingly, some delegates did not line up and salute:

[Clinton's] name was repeatedly booed on the convention floor, starting with the opening prayer and continuing intermittently throughout the night.

At one point the California delegation took up the chant "Lock her up" — the derisive call that became an anti-Clinton rallying cry at last week's Republican convention.

Matt Welch chats with some of the more frustrated delegates from California:

These people are pissed and despondent in a way I've never seen on the floor of a major-party convention.

"I was lucky a couple of weeks ago: I shot a squirrel to bring home for meat," said Brian Seligman, a former Marine on Social Security disability from a car wreck, who recently moved from the Los Angeles area to Victorville. Seligman says his wife can't find a job, and when the food stamps run out at the end of the month he needs to find creative way to feed his children.

"This isn't just my family," he said, voice welling with emotion, tears beginning to pool in his eyes. "There are 15,300,000 children STARVING in this country, and this woman wears a jacket worth more than I get in a year, while she goes out talking about how she's going to blow up other people's children for another trillion dollars. My kids are dying and she wants to murder other people's kids with my money!"

The Bernie Sanders revolution, which will officially fall short of its goal tomorrow when Clinton is voted the nominee, has Seligman thinking of next steps. "That's happened in history before in France, and their solution was guillotines," he said. "And another great Democrat, John Kennedy, said when peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable. And I don't want that, I want people to wake up and vote for someone that cares about people. Bernie comes and he said thank you to ME, personally, he shakes my hand. I've been outside her fundraisers in Beverly Hills, because I didn't have the $55,000 to get in. She didn't want to talk about my homeless brothers and sisters from the military. She didn't want to talk about my starving kids, she didn't want to talk about ending fracking, even though there was a freaking gas leak poisoning us. Yeah, you could say I'm a little upset."

A little before 11 p.m. Eastern last night, Bernie Sanders spoke to the convention and demonstrated he had no Cruz-esque defiance in him. In the end, Hillary Clinton — the one who took all that Wall Street money, who received gobs for speeches to every big firm and bank, the woman who had a personal foundation collecting donations from foreign countries while she set U.S. foreign policy — was good enough for the man who promised a political revolution was nigh.

"This felt more like a convention for Bernie Sanders than for Hillary Clinton, with many of his supporters refusing to embrace her candidacy and the convention floor descending into chaos for most of the day," said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. "Throughout this primary, a 74-year old socialist from Vermont has encouraged grassroots Democrats to reject Hillary Clinton's pay-to-play politics and cronyism, and the deep division that has fostered was on full display."

Bernie Sanders fans have every reason to be disappointed and angry. We now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, that not only did the Democratic National Committee staff strongly prefer Hillary Clinton, but they sat around thinking up new ways to hit Sanders, including contemplating making him elaborate on his religious beliefs. They scheduled the minimal number of early debates and put them in the most inconvenient timeslots. In a party without super delegates, the entire narrative throughout the primary would be different. We can't know for certain that a different DNC and Democrats using a super-delegate-free system would have elected Sanders, but it probably would have been even closer.

Bernie Sanders promised his supporters they could change the world if they just tried hard enough and worked hard enough. "Temper your expectations, be reasonable, compromise and settle" was the opposite of Sanders' rallying cry for the past year, and yet that's pretty much what he's asking of his supporters now.

A Now Suspense-Free Democratic Convention

Is anyone itching to hear Hillary Clinton speak Thursday? Is there any suspense? Are there any questions remaining to be resolved? If I asked any reader who follows politics to rattle off seven or eight points from Clinton's acceptance speech, they could probably get five or six right. Here, off the top of my head:

1. Making history as the first woman president.

2. Continuing the work that isn't finished but was begun by President Obama.

3. An America for all Americans, or something that sounds inclusive and happy.

4. Thanking Bernie Sanders and emphasizing "the most progressive Democratic party platform ever."

5. America is already great!

6. The heavy responsibilities of commander in chief and the need for someone who has been tested and endured.

7. "When I think of the America my grandchildren will inherit . . ."

8. America needs a president who never leaves anyone behind! (Except, you know, an ambassador and three other Americans under fire.)

'When They Go Low, We Go High.' What Are You, High?

Michelle Obama, talking about how Democrats don't believe in dividing people, don't believe in excluding people, don't go negative, and won't get into the gutter with their opponents: "When they go low, we go high."

Right. Four years ago:

The ISIS-Free Convention

In the past eleven days, we've seen five terrorist attacks in Europe: a truck attack in Nice, a suicide bomber in Ansbach, an attack with an axe on a train in Wuerzburg, a machete attack in Reutlingen, and a priest's throat slit in Rouen, France.

Not one speaker mentioned ISIS or Islamist terrorism last night. Democrats formulate their governing plans in a happier, peaceful, imaginary world.

The Story of Hillary, Heavily Rewritten for Kids

Over on the home page, you'll want to check out my look at a wonderfully illustrated children's book all about . . . Hillary Clinton. Yes, if you've ever yearned for a hagiography of Clinton fit to read your kids at bedtime, you're finally in luck: Earlier this year, HarperCollins Children's Books released Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead, written by Michelle Martel and illustrated by LeUyen Pham.

When our story begins, "in the 1950s, it was a man's world. Only boys could grow up to have powerful jobs. Only boys had no ceilings on their dreams." The accompanying illustration holds up Jackie Robinson as the beneficiary of patriarchal privilege, which is surely a historical first:

ADDENDA: A "Hillary Clinton Scandal Tour" t-shirt from the Republican National Committee, spotted in Philadelphia:

In case you can't read it, it lists cattle futures, Troopergate, Whitewater, Travelgate, the Health Care Task Force, Lincoln Bedroom for sale, impeachment, Rose Law Firm documents, Clinton Foundation scandals, foreign campaign donors, Clinton pardons, looting the White House, Hillraiser scandals, Sidney Blumenthal, secret server, Benghazi cover up, paid speech transcripts, and the FBI investigation. Whew!