Some News From The Democratic Side

Last week the media reported that Bernie Sanders supporters booed Barbara Boxer at the Democratic Convention in Nevada. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Yesterday Salon, a generally Democratic new outlet, posted a first-hand account of what actually happened. The Sanders supporters were not booing Barbara Boxer–they were booing the fact that the convention rules had been changed to marginalize their voice and their candidate.

The article reports:

…It wasn’t long before things took a turn. At 9:30, a full half hour before registration closed, Lange (Chairwoman, Roberta Lange) read the results of ballots that had been passed out to early arriving conventioneers regarding temporary rules for the convention, rules which would discount the results of the county convention (the second tier of the caucus process, where Bernie had won more delegates), rules which would require that all votes at the convention be decided by voice alone, and which ruled that the decision of the chairperson would be final. These temporary rules had passed with flying colors, which did not sit well with the Bernie delegates, many of whom had not been given ballots. Suddenly half the people of the room were on their feet, shouting “No!!!!” My son and I jumped to our feet as well, added our voices to the chorus. It felt good, all those voices of resistance vibrating through my body. I started to feel less like a cloud. I felt myself drop back into my body, surrounded by all these bodies yelling “No!”, feeling alive inside my skin.

Then people began to chant “Recount” and my son and I joined this call, too, throats aching, adrenaline coursing. Lange took the temporary rules to a voice vote. A hearty round of “Aye”s rose up from the Hillary side of the room, but when it was time for the “Nay” vote, the response was so loud, I felt it shake my every cell, felt it alter my heartbeat. The room was explosive with “Nay”s, roaring with it, and yet Lange decided in favor of the “Aye”s, which only set off more yelling. I thought about my dad, how once when I was a kid, I wanted to do something and my sister didn’t, and he said “If someone says no, you need to listen.” Lange definitely didn’t listen to all the “no”s in the room.

No wonder the Bernie Sanders supporters were booing.

The article continues:

From reports from my husband and other conventioneers, and from my own firsthand experience as my son and I wandered in and out of the hall as the day progressed, it appeared that Lange didn’t listen to much of anything the Bernie delegates had to say; she appeared not to count the votes from that side of the room; she ejected dozens of Bernie delegates who didn’t have a chance to defend their eligibility, and who, if they were allowed to stay, would have given Bernie more delegates than Hillary; she didn’t allow for a “minority report”; she cut off microphones when people challenged her.

When I read news stories about what happened that day, I don’t recognize much of what is being reported—while there was plenty of chaos, I witnessed no violence (nor did my husband or anyone else I knew at the convention). Bernie supporters were not trying to change the rules, as some journalists reported: they were justifiably outraged when the chairperson changed the rules without a majority vote, and then more outraged when, later, after a motion for a delegate recount, she shut the whole convention down with a pound of the gavel and threatened arrest to anyone who stayed in the room. So many of the news reports of the convention feel like gaslighting in that regard—stories trying to make it sound as if the Bernie delegates were a bunch of crazy nutjobs, when all they wanted was to be heard and counted.

The Hillary Clinton for President forces are ruthless. They really don’t care who they step on–even in their own party. I hope the Republicans remember this in November. I am not a Trump supporter, but I will vote for him before I will vote for Hillary. Most of all, I want an honest election.