The Bernie Delegates - Part 1

Unlike the 2008 convention, Hillary and Bernie delegates seemed to be in distinct separate camps. Perhaps it was the fact that the Bernie delegates were new people, most of us didn't know them . The two Bernie delegates from my district were both in their 20's. I had only met one of them at the SD-16 Senatorial Convention and the other after she was elected at State Convention. I do have a lot of friends in my activist circles that did support Bernie over Hillary. But they didn't run for National Delegate.

I knew only a couple of folks in the Bernie camp, Jacob Limon, the state leader and Kathleen Thompson, who I got to know eight years ago in Denver and have gotten to know better since we served on the SDEC together. It seems that all of my other SDEC friends were pledged to Clinton. Every elected official that I personally knew was pledged to Clinton.

The Hillary camp has bent over backwards to engage all of the Bernie supporters. The only thing that would have made some of this extreme element happy would have been for Hillary to step down and given the nomination to Bernie. That's it. Personally, I think she gave away too much and I consider myself to be very liberal.

It seems that only two of Bernie's platform proposals were not accepted - a proposal against the TPP and one for Palestinian Rights. I am personally against the TPP and would have liked to have seen that on the platform. Hillary Clinton has come out against the TPP. However, President Obama is for the TPP and it would have been a personal affront to him had it been included. The other was Palestinian Rights (I will be writing a separate post on anti-Semitism).

My friend Katherine saved a bunch of seats for us at the convention. She specifically said, "I don't want to sit near Sanders supporters." She grabbed two rows of seats. The aisle seats were already taken. Unfortunately, I wound up directly in front of a Bernie fringe supporter.

To clarify, not all Sanders supporters were the fringe supporters. The disruptive ones were definitely in the minority. But those were trying to do whatever they could without having their credentials pulled.

The first evening was embarrassing. There were boos even during the invocation. A frequent chant was "No TPP". Speakers were disrupted. It was awful and embarrassing. Staff members had to come up and tell them to stop. This was after our first delegation breakfast when we were clearly told that booing etc. would be grounds for removal of credentials.

Tuesday night was calmer. After the breakdown at the Tuesday morning breakfast and the removal of the leader's credentials, there seemed to be a calm down.

Tuesday at the convention I wound up talking to another Bernie delegate at one of the many charging stations in the arena. Cliff from the TDP also joined us. He was from Arkansas and very involved with the party. Although he was a Sanders delegate, he was fully supporting Clinton and would be working for her. He shared that the Sanders delegates were planning to behave the next two days and then be disruptive the final night of the convention. He refused to be part of that. I was cringing just thinking about them.

To be continued......