While the Republicans were busy acquiescing to their presumptive nominee, the Democrats were bringing a quiet and professional end to a drawn out primary process.
Oh, wait. No, they were resorting to fisticuffs on the floor of a casino ballroom.
Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucus handily, and Saturday, she was awarded her delegates at the Nevada Democratic convention at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. But that doesn’t mean that Bernie Sanders supporters were happy about it. As Clinton surrogate Sen. Barbara Boxer urged party unity, the floor erupted.
“We need civility in the Democratic Party, civility,” Boxer pleaded with the crowd, according to the Las Vegas Sun. The crowd responded by chanting “recount” and some other, less peaceful things. And then, the normally restrained Democratic socialists, enamored with their peaceful Vermont senator started throwing punches.
Boxer knew just what to say to calm the crowd. “You can boo all you want,” she said. “Boo louder, because you’re booing Bernie Sanders…We had our Nevada Caucus and Hillary Clinton won.”
Thanks to a convention attendee (who apparently survived the ordeal), we now know that Bernie Sanders supporters were asked by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police to leave in an orderly fashion or face arrest. The Sun says there was “palpable tension” in the room, but that’s kind of an understatement, considering that, at one point, the Democratic convention-goers required immediate medical attention.
The good news is, there were no serious injuries, except possibly to the sense of superiority Democrats have maintained through the Republican nomination process.
Apparently, the process erupted when 64 Sanders supporters were not allowed to present their case to the Nevada committee that they were wrongly denied delegate credentials. They tried several times to force a recount and then resorted to disrupting the process. Sanders supporters stormed the convention stage, to no avail —one Democratic official offered to alert the Democratic National Committee, but Paris Las Vegas, which has rarely seen anything more unruly than a Barry Manilow concert, put a swift end to the event.
This wasn’t even the only Bernie Sanders-related brawl of the weekend. Wendell Pierce, best known for his role in The Wire, and most recently for playing Justice Clarence Thomas in the HBO made-for-television movie Confirmation, was arrested following a “heated” political discussion in Atlanta. Apparently, he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter and “became enraged” after hearing Bernie Sanders’s name. Hotel security was called, and the Democratic nomination was one step further from being peacefully resolved.