Bridged the Democratic Divide?

Has Bernie Bridged the Democratic Divide?

He pleaded for a shift to Hillary Monday night, but many of his supporters may not be listening.

By Jeff Greenfield

Bernie Sanders, while expressing his disappointment in losing the party nomination, called Monday night for Democrats to support Hillary Clinton and unite behind what he described as “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” Sanders implored his thousands of supporters in Philadelphia to support not him—the insurgent who had made much of that platform happen—but the soon-to-be-nominee Clinton, the former centrist Democrat who defeated him. It was a speech that was hardly met with wild acclamation. There were many cheers, but also many tears on the floor as Bernie left the stage. And despite the calls for unity, it left the key question—Did he quell the hunger for mutiny?—in doubt.

Will Sanders’ plea work? Maybe the combined political weight of Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren (both of whom also made passionately pleas for support of Hillary Clinton on the first day of the DNC), and Sanders himself will be enough; maybe the pro-Bernie uproar that engulfed the opening moments of the convention Monday will ease; maybe the Sanders supporters who booed and yelled that morning when he said, “We have got to elect Hillary Clinton” will think differently after his declaration that night that “Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States.”

But if not, here’s why this tempest could be a genuine liability for the Democrats. If that rebellious mood were to continue, it would mark a sharp departure from recent conventions in which disruptive moments have gone the way of cigar smoke and fourth-ballot switches.

The truth is, Sanders may have lost control of his own movement, and many within it are not feeling nearly as conciliatory as the senator from Vermont is himself. All of which suggests the Democratic Party still has a long way to go in healing its divisions with just 100-plus days left to the election.

Sanders himself, despite his call for Democratic unity, offered an alternative haven for his supporters in the form of a new organization he announced just minutes after finishing his convention speech.

"Our work will continue in the form of a new group called Our Revolution,” he said. “The goal of this organization will be no different from the goal of our campaign: we must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families."

True, to expect a decorous convention runs against history. In the pre-primary age, a candidate came to a party's convention with no certainty that he would be the nominee. It took a pitched battle over credentials to settle the Eisenhower-Taft battle of 1952. It took every last ounce of Kennedy magnetism, wealth and muscle for him to win a first ballot nomination in 1960 with the votes of the last state on the roll call. It took all the clout of the White House for Gerald Ford to fight off Ronald Reagan’s 1976 challenge.

And in the course of these battles, the floor of the convention was something different from, say, the crowd at Wimbledon. In days past, one of the ways candidates demonstrated their strength was by staging demonstrations, with supporters marching around the hall, waving state standards (a practice that often occasioned wrestling matches and fistfights). Journalists would judge a candidate’s appeal by the length and volume of those demonstrations. In 1976, Ford delegate Jo Ann Davidson recalls: “The [Reagan] California delegation arrived with these big, long orange horns. And so, if they wanted to disrupt things, they just started blowing the horns. So then, the Ford delegates would stand up and start singing God Bless America. I never sang God Bless America so many times at any convention.” But because of the divisions, Ford ultimately lost the election to Jimmy Carter.

As for boisterous convention floors—go to YouTube and check out what happened in 1952 when Senator Everett Dirksen—speaking on behalf of the doomed campaign of Robert Taft—pointed his finger at the last nominee, Tom Dewey, and thundered: “We followed you before and you took us down the road to defeat! [in 1948]” The cheers, boos, hisses and screams rocked the hall.

But after the nomination was settled, there was—literally—no time for grudges. (Conventions ended a day after the presidential nominee was chosen). Yes, sometimes divisions were serious enough to hobble a nominee—think Goldwater in ’64, McGovern in ’72—but the default wrap-up of a convention was for the contenders to appear together to assure their followers that all was well.

Why did things change, leading us to this present moment? Once the primary process took over the business of picking candidates, no one came to the convention with any expectation of a genuine fight. The business of a convention for the past four decades has been to bind up whatever wounds the primaries opened. (Nothing more demonstrates this than what happened in Cleveland last week; many of the same politicians who described Donald Trump—literally—as a menace to the republic lined up behind him because ... well, because he clearly had won).

And here is what makes the possibility of a four-day Sanderstorm so daunting for the Democrats. Yes, the prospect of a challenge to Tim Kaine has evaporated—“We could have gotten the necessary delegates in our sleep,” says a key player inside the Bernie Delegate Network, “but we couldn’t find any candidate who would sign on.” But many are still locked in a state of cognitive dissonance, insisting that they are committed to defeating Trump, but also holding fast to their sense that they have been “disrespected.”

“There is intense anger,” adds Jeff Cohen, who is helping the network with its communications. “If she wanted unity, there should have been [a] different vice president. And then, after those emails [which revealed that DNC functionaries had sought to defeat Sanders], she makes Debbie Wasserman Schultz [the DNC chairwoman] an honorary chair of her campaign? Even some of the more politically experienced Bernie delegates feel that Team Clinton is out there provoking them.”

By night’s end, at least one of those behind efforts to sustain resistance was acknowledging the impact of Sanders’ words.

“He's done a good job of trying to bring center and left together against Trump, while emphasizing the need to continue the political revolution,” said a Bernie Delegates Network ally. “Of course, the delegates I’ve surveyed seem firm that choosing Kaine and not someone like Warren is a strategic error that undermines the center-left alliance.”

So Democrats must hope that Sanders’ plea Monday night will tamp down the anger and frustration; that the convention will be more like the ones we have seen in recent years. If not, we will witness scenes all but unknown to anyone under the age of 50: a house divided against itself, with a significant contingent more than happy to vent their anger in full view of the American electorate—no matter how urgently their champion urges them to stay their hand.