Portside

The meeting was underway Friday in St. Louis for scarcely more than an hour when the committee’s chairman, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), called a multiple-hour recess to resolve disagreements that were beginning to stir acrimony among committee members

As we head toward the Democratic National Convention, I often hear the question, "What does Bernie want?" Wrong question. The right question is what the 12 million Americans who voted for a political revolution want.

Sanders has been clear all along: He’s building a movement for radical change. Clinton won the nomination. She gets to choose whether to embrace that movement or ignore it, whether to adopt that platform or avoid it, whether to change the party or maintain the old order.

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The Democratic establishment wants Sanders and his supporters to report for duty and line up behind Clinton — to put aside their dreams and enlist. Sanders and his supporters are building a political movement both inside and outside the Democratic Party. They have their own agenda. But while this country needs change far more profound than anything Clinton champions, defeating Trump is essential to the progress of that movement.

As Clinton’s speech recognized, a Trump presidency promises an unprepared, dangerous foreign policy. But her refusal to engage with the real, robust alternative offered by Sanders may say more about her own war-driven foreign policy than anything else.

There is a more important question than whether or not Clinton has officially emerged bloody but victorious. If in fact Sanders has lost, than what have the Democrats won? And what does this mean for the future prospects of the country and world?

We simply can't afford to throw away the energy, the idealism, the thirst for justice that the Sanders campaign has revealed and revived. In the long run, that probably matters even more than who sits in the Oval Office. For the Democrats, the road to reconciliation is not obscure. Sanders is right to rail at our rigged system - but if the Democrats win in November thanks in part to his ideas and his voters, he'll be positioned to do something about it.

Verizon workers went on strike one week before a competitive New York state primary in which a socialist is running. You had a credible national candidate for president on a nationally-televised debate calling out the CEO of a big corporation. That just does not happen very often. Given the current climate, Hillary Clinton made a big point of coming to our picket line the first day of the strike, Bill went to a picket line in Buffalo.

Platforms are,a statement of the accepted beliefs of the party assembled. For citizen movements, they are a measure of their progress in defining acceptable opinion. And ideas matter. A commitment to ending segregation or guaranteeing the right to vote. Equal rights for women. No first use of nuclear weapons. The DNC prevented Sanders from picking nurses leader RoseAnn DeMoro - the DNC had not wanted labor leaders on the platform drafting committee.