This Is How Liberals Behave on the Day the First Woman Is Nominated for President?
PHILADELPHIA-A little before seven last night, when the votes of the South Dakota delegation were cast, the Democratic Party nominated Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman ever nominated by a major party for President of the United States. Not long after that, her primary opponent, an avowed Socialist named Bernie Sanders, moved that her nomination be declared by acclamation, and it was. So, naturally, the next thing that happened was that the press tent behind the Wells Fargo Center was occupied by disgruntled progressives because that's what happens when a major political party nominates the first woman ever nominated for President of the United States. I remain amazed.
The roll call itself was jovial and, occasionally, very touching, such as when Sanders' brother, whose name really is Larry Sanders, announced the tally of ballots from the Democrats Abroad. On the big viewing screens, Bernie Sanders visibly wept. As it wound down, word was passed among the Irreconcilables that there would be a walkout of Sanders delegates as soon as the roll call ended.
"This election was stolen!" screamed a woman in a green hat, standing on a chair in the middle of the Florida delegation. "Don't you all understand? She's a cheat and a thief and a killer!" Amid the generally joyous celebration, a crew from a local Fox affiliate moved in to film her and to conduct an interview. She pretty much repeated what she'd been screaming from atop the chair, because that's what you do when the first woman is nominated for president by a major American political party.
"Fuck it," said the woman in the green hat, "I'm tired of this shit. Let's go."
"The election was stolen!"
So that was the walkout, which was badly timed, because everybody was leaving the arena anyway because the nomination of the first woman for president by a major party already had happened and it was time for dinner and fun. But the Irreconcilables, numbering maybe 300 at the outside, reconvened in and around the massive press tents in back of the arena.
A number of them got into the place before police caught on, whereupon the police locked down the front doors to the tents, refusing to let anyone in, including the members of the press. Outside, a Sanders delegate named Matthew Rock was explaining things to a TV crew from Japan. "In every poll," he said, "Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump, and they're going to try to blame us. It's Hillary Clinton's fault that Donald Trump will become president. Enjoy your Trump presidency because she brought it to you."
Nearby, a delegate from Vermont named Shyla Nelson, who was much cooler than Rock was, made a similar case. Asked about the unquestioned victories that the Sanders supporters had won in the party's platform deliberations, Nelson dropped her voice into tones of deep concern not entirely unlike those of Peggy Noonan. "We have doubts about the implementation of some of those provisions," she said. "And we are also here to support those provisions that did not prevail, and to represent the grassroots people who have been shut out of the process. We also have some doubts about the implementation of the TPP."
Meanwhile, inside, the folks sat down in the middle of the media tent and applied various forms of tape to their mouths as the cameras formed a kind of corral around them. There was among them a dead certainty that the entire nominating process had been gamed away from Sanders by some sort of unholy finagling on the part of the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and, as far as I can tell, the Bavarian Illuminati. As soon as the sit-in broke up, they dispersed to all corners of the press tent, each doing their own interviews. It looked like media day at the Super Bowl.
At one point, having removed the tape from their mouths, they began to chant, "Let us out!" Nobody noticed that all the tents were connected by a big tunnel and that there was a back door. That is what happens on the day that a major political party nominates the first woman ever for president because, god knows, that's not enough news for one day.
I have lived long enough to see that. I also have lived long enough to know that some people will bring their own punchbowl to the party just to piss in it.
This, apparently, is what democracy looks like.
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