For some reason, political journalists hate it when actual voters engage in actual politics
The comedian and Bernie Sanders backer Sarah Silverman made headlines last night when she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention and said, “to the Bernie or Bust people, you’re being ridiculous.” She then called for “unity.”
The dramatic question on everyone’s mind as the DNC geared up was whether there would be “unity” amongst the Sanders and Clinton supporters. The fear is that if the party is not “unified” it will be unable to take down the fascist menace of Herr Trump. The data suggest that the fear is probably way overblown, but hey, at this point conventions are specifically designed to project “Unity.” Anyone who dares deviate from the script is chastised by the Professional Politico-Media class.
But exercising your political voice in a political convention is not “being ridiculous,” it’s democracy. The only way to get what you want in a democracy is to find ways to exercise political leverage in whatever small way you can. Threatening to disrupt a PR event and withhold support for the winning nominee are some of the (few) ways regular people can exercise any leverage over giant national parties.
Back in the day, political conventions must’ve been pretty awesome. They were where party delegates from every state got together to choose a presidential nominee. There was a whole lot of shouting, backdoor negotiating, leverage-exercising, protesting, and disrupting. But sometime around the ‘60s and ‘70s, conventions morphed into carefully managed TV events. They’re essentially really expensive four-day long infomercials for The Party.