While Democrats officially voted to nominate Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday night, some supporters of former candidate Bernie Sanders continued to shout down speakers early in the night during Wednesday’s proceedings.
Party leaders pitched for a unified front against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by the time President Barack Obama delivered the evening’s keynote address, the jeers had mostly subsided.
“If you agree that there is too much inequality in our economy and too much money in politics, we all need to be as vocal and as organized and as persistent as Bernie Sanders supporters have been during this election,” Obama said.
Sanders supporters threatened to disrupt Sen. Tim Kaine’s primetime address in which he accepted the nomination for vice president. Some have said Kaine isn’t progressive enough. His speech wasn’t interrupted.
Obama encouraged Sanders supporters who want “more justice” to vote in state and local elections.
“That’s where the criminal law is made, and we’ve got to work with police and protestors until laws and practices are changed, that’s how democracy works,” he said.
Mary Nishimuta, a Bernie Sanders delegate from Frankfort, said earlier on Wednesday that she would support Clinton and put her efforts into helping get out the vote for down-ballot races.
“I think we take it on the chin with this one, we didn’t get our man but that doesn’t mean that the political revolution is over,” Nishimuta said.
Nishimuta was one of the Sanders delegates who walked out of the convention on Tuesday night after Democrats officially voted to nominate Clinton. She said she was upset by party rules that allow for unpledged superdelegates who aren’t tied to the results from state primary elections.
“There are deep trust issues between the establishment and working class folks that don’t feel like their issues are taken into consideration in the political process,” Nishimuta said.
The convention began amid turmoil stemming from leaked emails showing that party staffers had sought to undermine Sanders’ campaign. One of the leaked emails showed a party official urging “someone” to question Sanders’ Jewish faith during Kentucky and West Virginia primaries.
Nishimuta said that Sanders supporters were “grieving,” but she disapproves of “Bernie or bust” Democrats who say they won’t vote for Clinton in November.
“I don’t agree that you should exit the process if you don’t agree with the outcome, I think you just have to work really hard to change the outcome for the next time,” she said.
