PHILADELPHIA—The Bernie Sanders delegates in California sit in the back. Few things in life or Democratic conventions are coincidences, and this is not one of them.
“They claimed that we couldn’t sit in empty seats [in front] because they were saving them,” said Ivan Enriquez, a Sanders delegate from Santa Ana. He had just about lost his voice after a day of screaming. The “they” in this case are Clinton’s California whips, who wear bright yellow traffic vests (unless they take them off and go as plainclothes whips, I was told). “Ironically, later on,” he continued, “one of their own whips comes to us and tells us we couldn’t save seats. So we could’ve been down there. They stopped us from doing that, so now we’re up here.” So now they’re up there. And from there, they’re the most vocal Sanders-supporting delegation in the arena.
I was standing with Sanders supporters during the speeches of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom many Sanders supporters liked a lot more before she endorsed Hillary Clinton, and part of Bernie Sanders’ speech, before a yellow-vested one of “them” told me to move for violating the fire code. (I was, but this whole overpacked convention, with twice as many delegates as the Republican National Convention and a too-large stage jutting into the crowd, is a raging fire-code violation.) They didn’t pay all that much attention to Warren, but they were rapt during Sanders. The California delegation was split during Sanders’ speech: The bottom half of the delegation (with the good seats) would cheer loudly for Hillary Clinton at the parts of Sanders’ speech praising Clinton, while the cheap-seated Sanders delegates would cheer loudly for Sanders during the parts of Sanders’ speech praising Clinton.
The whole day had gone like this, the two sides persistently out of step. Enriquez complained to me about mistreatment at this morning’s delegation breakfast: All of the speakers, he said, were surrogates for Clinton. “It’s become very clear by the way that the Hillary delegates are acting that they’re not really acting for unity,” he said. “Everything is happening behind the scenes, and that’s how they’re able to achieve unity.”
He noted, further, the difference in socioeconomic status between the Clinton and Sanders members of the California delegation. “I’m a student at [Sacramento State] … If you notice, most of the Bernie delegates are normal-ass people.” Sure, mostly. “If you look at the Hillary delegates, you have chief of staffs, you have people that are legislative aides … they’re not extending their hand.”
Enriquez seconded a story I’d heard earlier in the day, from his fellow delegate Manuel Zapata at the Bernie Delegates Network meeting, about the money Sanders delegates needed to raise simply to get to the convention. Zapata had said that, in his mind, Sanders endorsing Clinton when he did was a mistake because his delegates were still trying to fundraise for their flights and hotels, and this made soliciting donations much harder. Enriquez said he only heard a week and a half ago that he was going to be a delegate, and he raised $3,500 over four days, with hundreds more coming out of his pocket. Enriquez feels an obligation, as someone who’s traveling on other Sanders supporters’ dimes, to be vocal in the arena. “When I get home,” he said, “I have to explain myself to all those people.” Did he do everything he could? This is a pressure that many of Sanders supporters are operating under.
While we were talking, his fellow Sanders delegates around him began to boo, and Enriquez, barely a vocal cord left, got up to boo with them. I asked him what Elizabeth Warren had said. He thought about it, but looked lost. “It’s been a long night.”
