Events in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention, which got underway on Monday, have exposed a defect in the way that the media has portrayed close to half of the people who voted in the Democratic presidential primaries.
The idea that the millions of Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders were merely unthinking followers of a man was never very convincing. But the news media kept characterizing them as "Bernie Sanders supporters," and nothing more.
On Monday in Philadelphia, that claim and that idea never looked more false. Conspicuous inside the Convention were delegates for Sanders who were clearly unwilling to fall in line behind Clinton. Many of them held signs that demonstrated their continuing support for Sanders and opposition to Clinton.
Outside the Convention, in spite of sweltering heat and obstacles erected by the city reminiscent of the miniature police state it created for the Pope's recent visit, thousands also protested against the nomination of Clinton. The protesters regard her devotion to a rigged political system and an unfair economy as akin to that of big-business Republicans.
Lest anyone should mistake Sanders' primary voters for blind followers of a leader, a crowd of them booed Sanders himself when he urged them to set aside their principles to get into the gutter with Clinton.
Sanders won as many votes as he did because he spoke for ideas that the mainstream of both major parties had long shunted aside. Sanders' platform rejected a politics that forced voters to choose between two groups of self-interested rich people who could care less whether ordinary people live or die.
Instead, Sanders called for restoring influence over the political process to ordinary Americans. He also demanded that government intervention in the economy to make the outcomes it produced more fair for ordinary people.
Sanders' demands for economic and political fairness reminded me of a time before the Clintons became dominant figures in the Democratic Party. Back then, before the party's leadership turned its mainstream into nothing more than a second party of big business, it was possible for politicians like Sanders to occupy leading positions in the party.
Sanders' campaign sounded a very different note from the trickle-down policies catering only to big business and the richest Americans that both the Republican and the Democratic Parties have pursued for a generation and more. For people who demanded a fair political process and a fair economy, he was a hero. For all the Clinton campaign's talk of making history, Sanders broke through a glass ceiling constructed by the Clintons' big-business wing of the party that had shut genuine opponents of corruption and privilege out of the Democratic Party's leadership.
Sanders led the many people animated by these ideas as far as a partisan politician could. But his partisanship and the principles he espoused came into conflict on Monday. It's no surprise that many of his supporters were disappointed, and resolved not to do what he asked of them.
Indeed, for people who sacrificed time and money and made strenuous efforts on Sanders' behalf, his apparent sellout to Clinton in exchange for easily forgotten platform promises was in some ways deeply offensive. With the primary process already marred by a system of "superdelegates" designed to make a Clinton victory seem inevitable from the start, documents recently leaked on Wikileaks revealed that Clinton's allies in the Democratic National Committee also effectively worked to rig the primaries in Clinton's favor, and practiced just the kind of politics condemned by Sanders..
Those who worked hard for Sanders thus saw their work thwarted illegitimately by their own party's leaders. Now, Sanders has asked them to vote for a candidate whom they had long regarded as a supporter of a rigged economy and politics after she essentially cheated to defeat them.
Donald Trump won't see Sanders' primary voters will back him in droves. But neither will Clinton. Until someone else is willing to stand up for the principles Sanders stood for during his campaign, they'll be there waiting like a fallen standard for someone else to pick up and carry forward. Sanders' campaign showed that when that new person comes along, he or she will have a large following.
Clinton and her friends can be expected do everything possible to prevent the rise of anyone who might take Sanders' place at the national level. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton built their political careers in important part on the votes of people who felt that they had nowhere to turn after the Clintons marginalized Democratic leaders who stood for ordinary people against big business.
Still, demand for the platform Sanders advocated will persist, and demand has its way of encouraging supply. In time, someone will surely try again to deliver the goods.
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At the local level, it might be too difficult or time consuming for politicians of Clinton's ilk to stop every reformer. What might that mean for Philadelphia?
People here are jaded, and many don't think the existing bosses can be overthrown even by democratic vote. Ballot access requirements, the silent treatment from local news media, and property damage, intimidation, and physical violence are all likely to stand in the way of any serious effort to clean house at the top.
The city has also no credible opposition party. The Republicans here are tiny, distrusted, and as rotten as the Democrats. The most likely place for any movement along the lines suggested by Sanders to emerge is within the Democratic Party among its many disaffected members, or alongside it as a local third party.
Despite the obstacles to change, I'll go out on a limb and say that Sanders-style politics might someday pose a threat to the current group of political bosses.
It's no coincidence that none of them came out for Sanders, even though Democrats across the country did so. The very problems he drew attention to-- a rigged political system and an economy designed to favor a small number of very well-off people-- are present in microcosm in Philadelphia. Our existing political leaders are part of the problem. Many people think so.
What's been lacking are people committed to making the political system fairer, and to making the city's economic and regulatory measures and administrative and hiring practices something other than a smorgasbord of giveaways to well-placed people. Philadelphia still awaits its own group of reformers to make these changes happen. If they appear, they should have no trouble making their case.
