PHILADELPHIA — Insurgent delegates to the Democratic convention admitted defeat Tuesday in their bid to try to deny Sen. Tim Kaine the vice presidential nomination, saying party officials gave them the runaround and prevented them from even getting the paperwork needed to get their pick on the floor.
“There is no VP candidate. The DNC saw to that,” said Norman Solomon, a coordinator for the Bernie Delegates Network.
He said they had someone ready to stand as an alternate vice presidential pick, but he refused to release the name, saying the person was only going to step forward if the paperwork was able to be filed.
He admitted they didn’t have a hope of denying Mr. Kaine the nomination, but now they won’t get a chance to force a vote on their plans.
The Bernie Network, which is a coalition of hundreds of delegates who backed Sen. Bernard Sanders in the primary but which is not associated with him, said there is still interest in protesting during both Mr. Kaine’s acceptance speech and that of Hillary Clinton, when she speaks Thursday.
Mr. Sanders himself pleaded from the stage Monday for his supporters to get behind Mrs. Clinton, saying that in a race with GOP nominee Donald Trump it’s “not even close.”
Now the Sanders delegates are pondering his speech and trying to figure out what to do.
“I couldn’t stop crying. It was a feeling of a moment in history passed that I may not see again in my lifetime,” said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America.
She said she tried to get the forms needed to register an alternate candidate to Mr. Kaine, but party officials tossed hurdles in her way.
“The window of time has passed, so we can’t formally make a nomination through the process,” Ms. Smith said.
She said they may still try to make an appeal on the floor later Tuesday, but said the party keeps shifting the schedule, making it tough to plan a strategy.
Bernie Network leaders have been surveying their members this week and got 318 replies back. Of those, more than 200 said they wanted to make an issue of Mr. Kaine’s nomination.
Some 55 percent of the delegates who replied to the survey also said they were willing to participate in “nonviolent protest” of Mr. Kaine during his acceptance speech, and 58 percent said they’d be interesting in protesting during Mrs. Clinton’s speech.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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