What Happens In Vegas . . .

It seems that the Hillary Clinton campaign will stop at nothing to make sure that Bernie Sanders won't get any traction as the Democratic National Convention draws nears.  A week and change ago, Nevada State Democratic Party chair Roberta Lange presided over the Nevada Democratic convention  and recognized the approval of the rules on voice vote despite the obviously large number of voices against it.  Sanders himself noted that the Credentials Committee ruled ineligible enough Sanders delegates without allowing 58 of them to speak up.

"That decision enabled the Clinton campaign to end up with a 30-vote majority," Sanders said in a statement.  "The chair refused to acknowledge any motions made from the floor or allow votes on them. The chair refused to accept any petitions for amendments to the rules that were properly submitted. These are on top of failures at the precinct and county conventions including trying to depose and then threaten with arrest the Clark County convention credentials chair because she was operating too fairly."

So, you can see why so many Sanders delegates in Las Vegas got so upset.   They protested the way that the convention was run, the cavalier mistreatment they received, and the intimidation they got from the people running the show.  Some bad apples in Sanders camp got rowdy, and although there's no evidence of outright violence, the Clinton people and the media are painting Sanders supporters as dangerous instigators ready to spill blood.      

The mainstream media have argued that Clinton had more votes going into the Nevada state convention and would have won the majority of delegates anyway, and so the Sanders campaign has no case to make on their own behalf.  That may be so.  But if the process at the Nevada convention had been held in a more open matter, with more daylight, the Sanders people would have at least had the assurance that they lost fair and square.

I haven't tried to figure out the finer details of the rules in Nevada's Democratic Party, and I clearly wasn't there.  I know this much to be true, though: As on the floors of Nevada's casinos, the rules favored the house.