The morning after Bernie Sanders urged his supporters to back Dem nominee Hillary Clinton (and a bunch of them walked out in the wake of what was sort of a concession speech), his passionate supporters are not quite ready to let go of their guy.
After all, the process, in their view, was a picture of disillusionment at best.
“We're still finding kind of an establishment orthodoxy that we have pledged to fight against,” said Karen Bernal, a Sanders delegate from California, during a Wednesday press briefing of the Bernie Delegates Network.
Supporters are upset at what they perceive to be slights on multiple fronts against their candidate and the movement he represents — namely, a departure from a political system that favors those who can most afford to fill the coffers of those seeking political office (among many, many other things).
They're also not happy with Clinton's VP pick, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, whom they deem too conservative. He did, after all, say Clinton may sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement after taking office despite the Sanders camp's urging that she not support the controversial trade policy.
On Tuesday, they were so upset that they staged a walkout (though it wasn't exactly the story of the night).
That may have been, Bernal said, because it happened in a manner that was “very Occupy style,” “very horizontal” and “organically.”
“In the very very end it came together in the most old-fashioned way, which is people talking to each other,” she said.
Norman Solomon, also from California and is national coordinator for BDN, acknowledge that, when it happened, Tuesday's walkout was not exactly explosive.
“I didn't notice, and I think this was commonly true last night,” he said. “The walkout was one of the most imperceptible, quiet walkouts in the history of political life.”
Bernal defended the action against critics, precisely because it wasn't a part of the plastic pageantry of it all.
“We feel that we are not willing to go along as being extras in a scripted production," she said. "If nothing else, we add substance and actual interest to something that's extremely [contrived].”
Yet it wasn't disruptive and it reflected what should be an honest conversation within the Democratic Party.
“My answer to it is simply this: if you don't allow for the space for that kind of dissent within the party you've truly then said 'you have no place in the party.' And if you have no place in the party, maybe we don't really care about your votes as well,” Bernal said.
While Sanders supporters are voicing their discontent with the party, Solomon acknowledged there might be a reason the acrimony is particularly elevated this convention.
“There are culture clashes here. There are generational graphics. We all know the demographics. Very few people at this convention for Bernie have been to other conventions. They skew, really, to the young part of the spectrum,” he said. “They're accustomed, so to speak, of really healthy granola. They get into the convention, and what they're hearing is the equivalent of puffy white bread. So it's a shock to their system.”
They acknowledged they were unsure where Sanders supporters were going to go from here.
Yet one thing was for sure among many Sanders supporters, Solomon said.
“We want to defeat Donald Trump," he said. "We understand that Hillary Clinton is the only way to do that. In a sense, many of the Bernie delegates, consciously or unconsciously, are… trying to save the Hillary Clinton campaign from itself.”
Mike Fox, a Tampa Bay-based Sanders delegate who is national fundraising/phone-banking coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, told CL one thing was for sure:
"No violence," Fox said. "That, I can tell you."
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2016.