I'll Never Vote for Hillary Clinton

By the time hotel security shut down the event late Saturday evening, the Sanders delegates had hurled ugly epithets at Clinton surrogate Barbara Boxer, and used a sign to block her from being shown on big screens; screamed vulgarities at state Chairwoman Roberta Lange, who later received death threats after Sanders sympathizers posted her cell phone number and home address online; and threw chairs at the stage as they rushed forward to try to take control of a convention they had lost, just as Sanders was defeated at the Feb. 20 by Clinton in in a decisive result.

The next day, a group of Sanders supporters protested at the state Democratic Party headquarters and scrawled messages ('Murdered democracy" and "You are scum" among them) on the outside walls and nearby sidewalks.

Sanders, who had national campaign operatives on the floor at the Paris, has yet to comment on the near-riot his local operatives enabled as they poured gas on a fire that started with a lawsuit against the party and ignited after arguments about rules, voice votes and rejected delegates.

Despite their social media frothing and self-righteous screeds, the facts reveal that the Sanders folks disregarded rules, then when shown the truth, attacked organizers and party officials as tools of a conspiracy to defraud the senator of what was never rightfully his in the first place.

I don't think he joined "just to take advantage of party affiliation".

We believe, unfortunately, that the tactics and behavior on display here in Nevada are harbingers of things to come as Democrats gather in Philadelphia in July for our National Convention. We write to alert you to what we perceive as the Sander Campaign’s penchant for extra- parliamentary behavior—indeed, actual violence—in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting, and furthermore what we can only describe
as their encouragement of, and complicity in, a very dangerous atmosphere that ended in chaos and physical threats to fellow Democrats. Indeed, the threats to the Chair of the Nevada State Democratic Party are ongoing at time of this writing, as Sanders activists have posted her cell phone and home address online, and have bombarded her with threats to her life and the safety of her family.

The explosive situation arose in large part because a portion of the community of Sanders delegates arrived at the Nevada Democratic State Convention believing itself to be a vanguard intent upon sparking a street-fight rather than attending an orderly political party process. Surprised and outraged at the idea of being out-organized and thus outnumbered in the convention hall by Clinton delegates, a portion of the Sanders delegation rushed the dais immediately upon the opening of the convention and halted the progress of any convention business for much of the day. Indeed, every point during which Sanders delegates did not agree with any aspect of the proceedings saw them press up against the dais and scream obscenities and threats at the Chair, First Vice Chair, and any other speaker.

The Sanders Campaign spent its time either ignoring or profiting from the chaos it did much to create and nothing to diminish or mitigate. It was clear to the NSDP that part of the approach by the Sanders Campaign was to employ these easily-incensed delegates as shock troops to sway the convention proceedings. At the very least, these delegates became a way for the Sanders Campaign to seek the advantage of disruption at any particular moment while trying to disavow any responsibility for their actions even as it was ongoing. At no time did any Sanders representative make anything more than token gestures towards peace in the hall, and at the times of most intense crisis offered little more than shrugs and smirks.

The most egregious instance of the Sanders Campaign inciting disruption—and yes, violence—came as the State Convention’s Credentials Committee completed its work. Adam Gillette, part of National Delegate Operations Team for the official Sanders Campaign, drafted and arranged for a member of that committee to attempt to deliver an incendiary, inaccurate, and wholly unauthorized “minority report” charging that the
Credentials Committee had fraudulently denied 64 Sanders delegates their eligibility. The final delegate count had provided the Clinton Campaign with a 33 delegate advantage in the hall; one can imagine the rage occasioned by this inflammatory charge, tossed into the tinderbox of a tense convention hall. Not only did this discredit the work of the Credentials Committee—which featured five Sanders delegates and five Clinton
delegates and a Sanders co-chair, and who worked all day under extremely trying conditions to be fair and diligent in their duties—it called into question the entirety of the proceedings because it indicated to an irrational minority that the proceedings had been rigged against them. Forcing their way onto the dais to deliver this paranoid fantasy of fraud and delegate theft was clearly intended to throw the proceedings into disarray.

You want me to go all in on SuperDelegates overturning the will of black and brown voters, as expressed in diverse primary after diverse primary, because Bernie has tapped into the angry white man vote? Have you Bernie supporters completely lost your minds? In what UNIVERSE am I supporting the guy who is being buoyed by “white rage” over the person who has won more votes without it?

Bernie is telling us that he can essentially re-direct an angry mob of white people, and sic them on their true enemy. Trump is telling this same group of people that “the Hispanics” are to blame for their problems. Or China. Bernie offers “the banks” as responsible for their problems. Or global trade. Both of them play into the central conceit of the white male voter: that something was taken from them, by somebody else, and they have to fight to get it back.

Bernie and Trump are fighting to make Bruce Springsteen a cultural touchstone again. The rest of us are drinking Lemonade.

The only way the Democrats can lose this election is if they make it about the Trump voter. **** the Trump voter. This election is about more than who white people should blame for losing jobs that they never shared with women and minorities anyway. I really don’t give a good Goddamn about who the Downtrodden Coal-Miners Union of ‘Merica thinks will be best at turning back the clock to 1956.

Bernie Sanders is, of course, welcome to continue to fight on behalf of disaffected white people everywhere. But he can’t be the nominee. He can’t go to the convention and argue that his pissed off white support is somehow more valid than all the votes and all the delegates Hillary has won from a far more diverse cross section of the Democratic party. White people are no longer the dispositive affinity group in the Democratic party tent. Sorry guys. This is how it feels like when you have to make friends with other interest groups in order to get ahead. I’m sure the LGBT community has a pamphlet or something that you can read.

This is, by the way, the same terrible argument about centrality of white working class support that Hillary herself was making in 2008. Literally. In ‘08, HRC positioned herself as the choice of white people you needed to win the general election, and she hung in there with it right up until the convention.

But Barack Obama proved that if you turn out minority voters, women, and white men with a college education, you can run a freaking black guy and there’s nothing poor white people can do to stop it. It’s a lesson that Hillary seems to have learned.

I expect a good guy like Bernie Sanders will learn it too, before the end.

Jon Ralston has long-been known as Nevada’s leading political observer, tough, smart and fair:

Ralston’s account straightforwardly lays the blame for what happened at the Convention virtually 100% on the Sanders campaign and supporters. The Democratic Party, according to Ralston, did nothing at all wrong or unusual, and the riot resulted from misinformation deliberately fed to Sanders supporters, led by Congressional candidate Erin Bilbray and Sanders organizer Angi Morelli, who patrolled the area with megaphones, and abetted by numerous social media conduits in an intentional and organized effort to disrupt the convention.