If you watched yesterday’s Nevada convention through some of the live-feeds going on, the convention ended in an extremely chaotic way.
Delegates were told (after 11 hours) that they could leave and go home. At this point Sanders’ supporters started to yell at each other to not leave. Their plan was to wait until the Clinton delegates had left and THEN ask for a recount (sounds totally fair, right?).
What happened however is that at some point, the chair woman took to the podium, confirmed the votes, closed the meeting and sprinted off the podium, protected by a number of police officers.
When Sanders supporters realized what had happened they rushed the side of the venue where Lange had left but they were too late (and yes that looked scary like hell).
The kind of mass hysteria displayed by Sanders’ supporters, the cries to “stop her”, it was all completely unreal.
Ofc she is now the most hated person, who dared stand between them and the delegates they felt they were entitled to (really?).
Right afterwards her private phone number was published on reddit, and her name has been going around like crazy as the person personally responsible for Sanders’ defeat.
Yet, today it became clear why she acted like she acted:
twitter.com/...
“NV Dems get kicked out of Paris hotel after convention chaos”. Nice job…
The chair woman was told by hotel security they could no longer guarantee the safety of all present due to the mob like behaviour (my words) of the Bernie supporters and therefore she quickly concluded the meeting, after which she had to be escorted out by police officers.
Security then formed a circle around some remaining delegates, and were called nazis and worse by Sanders’ supporters.
Anyone that watched yesterday’s proceedings should agree this was a horrible, nasty attempt to win delegates through mob rule. And why not? The same tactics were used at earlier conventions and worked out fine for Sanders.
I sincerely hope Sanders will find it in himself to distance himself from what happened yesterday and how his ‘fans’ behaved, but somehow I doubt it.
And I most of all hope, Lange will be safe the coming days/ weeks.
I’m only posting this in the faint hope some Bernie supporters will read this, calm down and stop going after this courageous woman. That I have to call her courageous, for standing up to a mob, is actually too sad in itself.
But she was doing her job, and it isn’t her fault more Clinton supporters showed than Sanders’ supporters.
There were no evil attempts to deny Bernie, there were two counts which both showed Hillary had more delegates present. There was no evil rule change and Sanders’ supporters were at fault for not knowing convention rules, expecting to be able to change rules by a simple majority, when in fact they needed a 2/3d majority, which they didn’t have.
Their booing, interruptions and intimidation did not lead to any result, as it shouldn’t.
But the chair did her job, she had to end the convention because security could no longer be guaranteed. Leave the woman alone for god’s sake.
And when I read these kinds of messages (many of them) today at reddit by Sanders’ supporters:
“Philly will be Nevada on steroids folks. The democratic convention should burn to the ground. Are we going to take this crap????”
I surely hope Sanders will finally distance himself from these people.
Sanders supporters are atm raging in mass hysteria. Ive seen it happen multiple times the last weeks: someone goes into /s4p at Reddit, posts some totally made up crap (“the conventions rules were just changed to deny Sanders his delegates”), everyone believes it, people are being fired up and explode in mass hysteria. No one stops to ask if such accusations are even true. The hatred against Clinton and the DNC is growing every minute.
Can we be sure, Trump supporters aren’t actively trying to rile up Sanders’ supporters like that? If they are, they’re very successful.