If you tuned in only for the opening of this Democratic convention in Philadelphia Monday, you might have been asking yourself who really emerged from the primary season in control of the party.
Even as protesters turned the streets of Philadelphia into an Occupy Wall Street rally, even as the party’s chairwoman handed over her gavel and fled the arena to avoid further humiliation, Bill Clinton sat in the balcony, opposite the main stage, and pretended to cheer as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders effectively excoriated his entire economic philosophy.
Energized delegates waved signs denouncing the latest free-trade pact and erupted in jeers at Wall Street. It must have felt to Clinton as if he had drifted back in time to the Democratic conventions of the Humphreys and Mondales, and here he was, hovering above the stage like some unexorcized ghost.
Hillary Clinton was the nominee, but it seemed for all the world as if Sanders’ argument had carried the day.
If you looked at the program for the entire four days, however, you might have realized that all of this was by design. Just as the first night of the Republican convention a week earlier seemed to be all about washed-up TV stars, the opening of the Democratic confab, which began with a lineup of union leaders, was effectively conceived as “populist night” in Philadelphia.
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