Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sanders Delegation Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up
Democratic Convention
________________________________________
Sanders Delegation Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up Democratic
Convention
By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
July 18, 2016
Different camps inside Bernie Sanders' 1,900-member delegation to the
Democratic National Convention next week are anticipating varying degrees of
protests-some telegraphing their intentions now, others planning in
secret-if Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party does not make additional
major concessions.
These protests go beyond high-profile public announcements in recent days,
such as scholar and activist Cornell West, who was appointed to the Platform
Committee at Sanders' request, announcing [3] that he would be supporting
Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee in November.
On Saturday, a group called the Bernie Delegates Network announced [4] that
more than 250 Sanders delegates had responded to its poll about the
acceptability of six possible centrist vice presidential picks: Sen. Tim
Kaine, D-VA; HUD Secretary Julian Castro; Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA; Sen. Cory
Booker, D-NJ; Admiral James Stavridis and Admiral Mike Mullen. All were
overwhelming rejected, with a majority of respondents saying they would
"seriously consider" publicly denouncing a centrist v.p. pick and/or
"nonviolently and emphatically protesting in the convention hall during
Clinton's acceptance speech."
"You see in the survey if they close Tim Kaine, or someone like Tim Kaine,
it could be a somewhat unruly convention," said Jeff Cohen, co-founder of
RootsAction, which conducted [4] the poll in partnership with Progressive
Democrats of America. "To have two corporate centrists on the ticket when 45
percent of voters were voting for a transformative progressive agenda is a
slap in the face to them and to 1,900 delegates."
Cohen said the poll-which did not have any progressive choices on it, such
as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, or Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH-was sent to
about 1,000 delegates to try to "facilitate communication" among people
headed to Philadelphia because the once top-down Sanders campaign "is sort
of a void now." Cohen said, "As of Sunday night, 212 people had said they're
ready to denounce, and 179 said they were ready to protest during Clinton's
speech."
The group, which hopes Clinton will pick a progressive, also has other
protest plans. "We already have a distribution network for stickers inside
the hall, which delegates can wear by the hundreds, some of which are pretty
oppositional," he said. "One will say 'Stop the TPP.' Another one will be
'Hillary is a war hawk.'"
It was important to focus on the vice presidential choice, Cohen said,
because it was one decision that Clinton "cannot go back on" or reverse, and
because "if you study U.S. history, of the 43 presidents we've had, about a
third have been vice presidents."
Many Possible Protests
The poll and its follow-up actions are one thread in an evolving tapestry of
potential protests in Philadelphia. There have been other public efforts,
such as e-mails to Bernie delegates since he endorsed Clinton last week that
argued he did it just to get into the convention hall where he can still
win. One such e-mail sent to New England delegates had this
question-and-answer section:
Q: So Wait, Bernie DIDN'T quit today?
A: No. he has to say she won the primary, he endorses her and will help the
party defeat Trump, yada yada but he DID NOT concede. There is a very big
and important difference. Had he conceded, all of his delegates would go to
Hillary and he would no longer be an option for the nominee.
Q: So Bernie can actually still win?
A: YES. And if he wasn't still TRYING to win, he would have conceded. The
ONLY option he had to get to the convention with his delegates behind him
and have a chance to still win was to do what he did today. He is not a
traitor. he didn't sell us out. He did the only possible thing he could have
done to keep fighting for the nomination.
Seeing this e-mail, one state Democratic Party official commented, "This is
the craziness that is fueling some of our nationwide delegates. I've been
told that everyone that is in a responsible position is dealing with these
posts."
"There are adherents to that strain of thinking, but it's not very big,"
said Karen Bernal, a Sanders delegate from Sacramento elected as a
co-representative of the California delegation, the nation's largest. In a
half-hour interview, she described a half-dozen different camps under the
Bernie umbrella: the Bernie or Bust crew, reflected in the Q&A e-mail; a
similiar subset that thinks the party's super delegates, or hundreds of
party insiders and elected officials, still can be swayed to pick Sanders;
people, like those in the v.p. poll, who say they are willing to publicly
protest on the floor; those who agree with those protesters but would not
disrupt the proceedings; those who will follow whatever directions Sanders
or the campaign says; and "eventual nominee" types, who tend to be elected
or aspiring politicians, who will back Clinton.
"As you can imagine, we have everything from the most die-hard Bernie
Busters," Bernal said, speaking of the 200-member California delegation and
its counterparts. "In terms of the people who occupy that universe, they are
almost indistinguishable from protesters you will see outside the
convention. Under no circumstance will they ever vote for Hillary. They're
very protest-minded. That goes all the way to to the other end of the
spectrum, which is the 'eventual nominee' types. These are all Bernie
delegates."
Keeping Plans Secret
What was most intriguing about the delegation that Bernal described was that
the individuals and contingents who are serious about protesting are looking
at a series of upcoming decisions-not just the v.p. pick-and were keeping
quiet about their plans, she said. They are not releasing vice presidential
poll results, writing op-eds about moving to the Green Party, or sending out
far-fetched interpretations of the strategy lurking behind Sanders'
endorsement of Clinton.
"What I can tell you is most of the other national organizing efforts I know
of are fairly insular, and you can kind of read into why they might
be-because they plan actions," Bernal said. "And so the organizing seems to
be peer to peer, and not necessarily anything you would find publicly
posted, because that is the nature of what they wish to organize. I'll leave
it at that."
There were going to be "a couple of other shoes that drop" as the Democratic
conventional approaches, she said. "The v.p. pick is one of them. Two other
things from what I'm hearing-not only in California but in couple of other
states-no one is accepting what has taken place regarding the minority
(platform) report, and the fact that they have tried to shut down any kind
of floor fight over the platform amendments that were rejected, particularly
TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal]. There's lots of delegates that
want to push on that and fight back and insist on some action on the floor
regarding that."
"The other one is whatever comes out of the Rules Committee meeting on
Saturday," Bernal said, referring to the Sanders campaign's effort to end
the party's super delegate system. "You will definitely see, if it doesn't
go well, which, we believe with Barney Frank as its chair, that it
won't-there will some action around that for sure. The reason you are not
seeing a lot of things publicly posted is why would we want to advertise out
intentions so publicly so they can be interfered with? That's the thinking."
Bernal said that what's uniting many Sanders delegates is a desire to have a
roll call vote where each state announces their primaries and caucus
results-so that the nation can see how much support there was for Sanders
and his vision. Twenty-three states and 13 million people voted for Sanders,
she emphasized.
In the meantime, Bernal said the Sanders campaign barely has been in contact
with the state delegations, and many delegates have taken it upon themselves
to do their best to represent the voters who are sending them to
Philadelphia.
"There is no two-way communication whatsoever, and even one-way
communication from the campaign is very little," she said. And if there were
top-down directions, "I am not so sure how successful it would be, because
the Bernie delegates themselves are very independently minded. They have
been informed by Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and so on. What you have is a
movement that is self-organized. I'm not so sure that unless the message was
one of resistance, that necessarily everyone would fall into lockstep behind
anything the Bernie Sanders' campaign said."
And so, the many slices of Sanders' supporters have taken it upon themselves
to decide what message they will bring to Philadelphia.
"In that void, you have various different self-organized organizations
popping up, some of them with wide reach," she said. "They are networking
from state to state. Some of them are about trying to do what Bernie's
campaign wants. Some are about making a statement that is self-determined,
because now everyone realizes the campaign has been compromised because of
the endorsement. Kind of like snow on a warm day, they are melting into the
landscape-the DNC landscape and Hillary Clinton landscape. Instinctively,
many Bernie delegates see that. They are taking it upon themselves to define
what they are going to insist upon at the convention."
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [5]
[6]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/sanders-delegation-plotting-public-and
-secretly-shake-democratic-convention
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/14/barack-obama-us-racism
-police-brutality-failed-victims
[4]
http://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/1235-first-survey-of-sanders-delegates-p
otential-clash-ahead
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sanders Delegation
Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up Democratic Convention
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sanders Delegation Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up
Democratic Convention
Sanders Delegation Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up Democratic
Convention
By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
July 18, 2016
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+More
AddThis Share optionsShare to Email
Different camps inside Bernie Sanders' 1,900-member delegation to the
Democratic National Convention next week are anticipating varying degrees of
protests-some telegraphing their intentions now, others planning in
secret-if Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party does not make additional
major concessions.
These protests go beyond high-profile public announcements in recent days,
such as scholar and activist Cornell West, who was appointed to the Platform
Committee at Sanders' request, announcing [3] that he would be supporting
Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee in November.
On Saturday, a group called the Bernie Delegates Network announced [4] that
more than 250 Sanders delegates had responded to its poll about the
acceptability of six possible centrist vice presidential picks: Sen. Tim
Kaine, D-VA; HUD Secretary Julian Castro; Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA; Sen. Cory
Booker, D-NJ; Admiral James Stavridis and Admiral Mike Mullen. All were
overwhelming rejected, with a majority of respondents saying they would
"seriously consider" publicly denouncing a centrist v.p. pick and/or
"nonviolently and emphatically protesting in the convention hall during
Clinton's acceptance speech."
"You see in the survey if they close Tim Kaine, or someone like Tim Kaine,
it could be a somewhat unruly convention," said Jeff Cohen, co-founder of
RootsAction, which conducted [4] the poll in partnership with Progressive
Democrats of America. "To have two corporate centrists on the ticket when 45
percent of voters were voting for a transformative progressive agenda is a
slap in the face to them and to 1,900 delegates."
Cohen said the poll-which did not have any progressive choices on it, such
as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, or Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH-was sent to
about 1,000 delegates to try to "facilitate communication" among people
headed to Philadelphia because the once top-down Sanders campaign "is sort
of a void now." Cohen said, "As of Sunday night, 212 people had said they're
ready to denounce, and 179 said they were ready to protest during Clinton's
speech."
The group, which hopes Clinton will pick a progressive, also has other
protest plans. "We already have a distribution network for stickers inside
the hall, which delegates can wear by the hundreds, some of which are pretty
oppositional," he said. "One will say 'Stop the TPP.' Another one will be
'Hillary is a war hawk.'"
It was important to focus on the vice presidential choice, Cohen said,
because it was one decision that Clinton "cannot go back on" or reverse, and
because "if you study U.S. history, of the 43 presidents we've had, about a
third have been vice presidents."
Many Possible Protests
The poll and its follow-up actions are one thread in an evolving tapestry of
potential protests in Philadelphia. There have been other public efforts,
such as e-mails to Bernie delegates since he endorsed Clinton last week that
argued he did it just to get into the convention hall where he can still
win. One such e-mail sent to New England delegates had this
question-and-answer section:
Q: So Wait, Bernie DIDN'T quit today?
A: No. he has to say she won the primary, he endorses her and will help the
party defeat Trump, yada yada but he DID NOT concede. There is a very big
and important difference. Had he conceded, all of his delegates would go to
Hillary and he would no longer be an option for the nominee.
Q: So Bernie can actually still win?
A: YES. And if he wasn't still TRYING to win, he would have conceded. The
ONLY option he had to get to the convention with his delegates behind him
and have a chance to still win was to do what he did today. He is not a
traitor. he didn't sell us out. He did the only possible thing he could have
done to keep fighting for the nomination.
Seeing this e-mail, one state Democratic Party official commented, "This is
the craziness that is fueling some of our nationwide delegates. I've been
told that everyone that is in a responsible position is dealing with these
posts."
"There are adherents to that strain of thinking, but it's not very big,"
said Karen Bernal, a Sanders delegate from Sacramento elected as a
co-representative of the California delegation, the nation's largest. In a
half-hour interview, she described a half-dozen different camps under the
Bernie umbrella: the Bernie or Bust crew, reflected in the Q&A e-mail; a
similiar subset that thinks the party's super delegates, or hundreds of
party insiders and elected officials, still can be swayed to pick Sanders;
people, like those in the v.p. poll, who say they are willing to publicly
protest on the floor; those who agree with those protesters but would not
disrupt the proceedings; those who will follow whatever directions Sanders
or the campaign says; and "eventual nominee" types, who tend to be elected
or aspiring politicians, who will back Clinton.
"As you can imagine, we have everything from the most die-hard Bernie
Busters," Bernal said, speaking of the 200-member California delegation and
its counterparts. "In terms of the people who occupy that universe, they are
almost indistinguishable from protesters you will see outside the
convention. Under no circumstance will they ever vote for Hillary. They're
very protest-minded. That goes all the way to to the other end of the
spectrum, which is the 'eventual nominee' types. These are all Bernie
delegates."
Keeping Plans Secret
What was most intriguing about the delegation that Bernal described was that
the individuals and contingents who are serious about protesting are looking
at a series of upcoming decisions-not just the v.p. pick-and were keeping
quiet about their plans, she said. They are not releasing vice presidential
poll results, writing op-eds about moving to the Green Party, or sending out
far-fetched interpretations of the strategy lurking behind Sanders'
endorsement of Clinton.
"What I can tell you is most of the other national organizing efforts I know
of are fairly insular, and you can kind of read into why they might
be-because they plan actions," Bernal said. "And so the organizing seems to
be peer to peer, and not necessarily anything you would find publicly
posted, because that is the nature of what they wish to organize. I'll leave
it at that."
There were going to be "a couple of other shoes that drop" as the Democratic
conventional approaches, she said. "The v.p. pick is one of them. Two other
things from what I'm hearing-not only in California but in couple of other
states-no one is accepting what has taken place regarding the minority
(platform) report, and the fact that they have tried to shut down any kind
of floor fight over the platform amendments that were rejected, particularly
TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal]. There's lots of delegates that
want to push on that and fight back and insist on some action on the floor
regarding that."
"The other one is whatever comes out of the Rules Committee meeting on
Saturday," Bernal said, referring to the Sanders campaign's effort to end
the party's super delegate system. "You will definitely see, if it doesn't
go well, which, we believe with Barney Frank as its chair, that it
won't-there will some action around that for sure. The reason you are not
seeing a lot of things publicly posted is why would we want to advertise out
intentions so publicly so they can be interfered with? That's the thinking."
Bernal said that what's uniting many Sanders delegates is a desire to have a
roll call vote where each state announces their primaries and caucus
results-so that the nation can see how much support there was for Sanders
and his vision. Twenty-three states and 13 million people voted for Sanders,
she emphasized.
In the meantime, Bernal said the Sanders campaign barely has been in contact
with the state delegations, and many delegates have taken it upon themselves
to do their best to represent the voters who are sending them to
Philadelphia.
"There is no two-way communication whatsoever, and even one-way
communication from the campaign is very little," she said. And if there were
top-down directions, "I am not so sure how successful it would be, because
the Bernie delegates themselves are very independently minded. They have
been informed by Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and so on. What you have is a
movement that is self-organized. I'm not so sure that unless the message was
one of resistance, that necessarily everyone would fall into lockstep behind
anything the Bernie Sanders' campaign said."
And so, the many slices of Sanders' supporters have taken it upon themselves
to decide what message they will bring to Philadelphia.
"In that void, you have various different self-organized organizations
popping up, some of them with wide reach," she said. "They are networking
from state to state. Some of them are about trying to do what Bernie's
campaign wants. Some are about making a statement that is self-determined,
because now everyone realizes the campaign has been compromised because of
the endorsement. Kind of like snow on a warm day, they are melting into the
landscape-the DNC landscape and Hillary Clinton landscape. Instinctively,
many Bernie delegates see that. They are taking it upon themselves to define
what they are going to insist upon at the convention."
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [5]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[6]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/sanders-delegation-plotting-public-and
-secretly-shake-democratic-convention
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/14/barack-obama-us-racism
-police-brutality-failed-victims
[4]
http://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/1235-first-survey-of-sanders-delegates-p
otential-clash-ahead
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sanders Delegation
Plotting in Public and Secretly to Shake Up Democratic Convention
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
