PHILADELPHIA — A well-known Bernie Sanders delegate was blocked from introducing the Vermont senator Tuesday night at the Democratic Convention and banned from the stage after she refused to endorse Hillary Clinton, a report says.
Initial reports say that prominent Sanders delegate, Ohio Democratic state Sen. Nina Turner, was stripped of her credentials and ejected from the arena but the story that later developed Wednesday morning seems to be that Turner was actually blocked from introducing Sanders and banned from the stage.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>For refusal to endorse Clinton, <a href=”https://twitter.com/ninaturner”>@ninaturner</a> not ejected. Just blocked from introducing <a href=”https://twitter.com/BernieSanders”>@BernieSanders</a>, banned on stage, + humiliated. <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Dems?src=hash”>#Dems</a></p>— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) <a href=”https://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/758300732227461120″>July 27, 2016</a></blockquote>
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The Daily Caller asked Turner if the DNC or the Clinton camp pressured her in any way and Turner only said, “They would have to answer that. All I can say is Senator Sanders wanted me to be one of the people who put her in nomination.”
Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, reportedly do not forget about those who may have wronged them during primaries.
A member of the Clinton 2008 campaign team told the authors of the Hillary Clinton political tell-all book “HRC”: “We wanted to have a record of who endorsed us and who didn’t,” said a member of Hillary’s campaign team, “and of those who endorsed us, who went the extra mile and who was just kind of there. And of those who didn’t endorse us, those who understandably didn’t endorse us because they are [Congressional Black Caucus] members or Illinois members. And then, of course, those who endorsed him but really should have been with her … that burned her.”
When asked at a press conference Wednesday about the Clinton’s reported need to go after those who did not stay on her side, Karen Bernal, a California Sanders delegate and representative of the Bernie Sanders Delegate Network, replied, “I’m sure we will hear things and every now and then I hear things from the higher ups and its kind of always in jest with a little sharp corner to it. You just have to take it and let it roll off your back,” she said, later adding the facts of the Turner incident were still a little “murky.”
In hopes to quell the anger of Sanders supporters and their delegates at the Democratic National Convention, the DNC trotted out progressive icon Democrat Sen. Liz Warren of Massachusetts to show support for Hillary Clinton and persuaded Sanders himself to move to nominate Clinton by acclamation Wednesday night.
The Wells Fargo Arena roared when Sanders released his delegates and Clinton became the nominee of the party Tuesday. He left the arena immediately thereafter and dozens of his delegates walked out with him in protest.
Wisconsin and California delegates told RT that they saw Sanders walking out of the arena and followed his lead.
Outside the arena, at least 20 to 40 Sanders activists and delegates stormed the press tent until law enforcement arrived, while anti-Clinton protesters scaled the convention’s perimeter metal fencing.
The walkout happened just one day after Sanders supporters and delegates received cell phone texts asking his followers to not engage in any protest action on the floor against Clinton.
So who really guides the “Bernie” movement — Sanders or his supporters?
“The vast majority of Bernie delegates have taken this to heart. We absolutely know that Sen. Sanders owes his success to a large degree, his base has been born of the resistance movement—Black Lives Matter, Occupy. These were things he did not create, but because of the timing and these things were already on the ground, he was able to ride in on that success,” Bernal said Wednesday morning.
She explained, “It’s the parade that’s huge and he’s able to be in front of that. I think that the ‘political revolution’ as it has been called goes on and Sanders embodies it. He’ll always be seen as a leader as a sort of father figure, make no mistake about it, but it is very independent. It always has been — throughout the campaign.”
When pressed if Sanders lost control of the movement that long supported him, Bernal replied, “He never was in control of it.”