Mourning time

See you at the Bernie Sanders rally! That’s pretty much how I ended my column last week. And then I got hit with that nasty virus that’s going around. It starts with a sore throat and morphs into head and body aches, laryngitis, coughing and runny nose. I spent all of last Thursday, the day Sanders touched down in Chico, at home in bed.

Meanwhile, every member of CN&R’s editorial staff, including our interns, made their way to the big event. Former intern and longtime contributor Vic Cantu pitched in, too. A few of my colleagues shot me text messages, filling me in on the action. One of them, Assistant News Editor Howard Hardee, sent me a message the next day that pretty well summed things up. He felt badly, he said, that I’d missed my “equivalent to the Super Bowl.” That sounds about right.

As if to rub salt in my wound, later that evening I received a phone call from the Sanders campaign asking for my support in the primary. When I told the caller I’d planned to vote for him, she asked about others in my household and my life. I have to hand it to Sanders; his folks have a knack for being aggressive, yet not off-putting.

On Saturday morning, as I continued to take it easy, I heard my husband open the door after a loud knock. It was a Sanders campaign volunteer named Justin canvassing my ’hood. I hadn’t heard a peep from Hillary Clinton’s camp. Maybe the Vermont senator could actually pull off a win, I thought.

And then came Monday, the day before the primary. That’s when The Associated Press, in a rush to be first, crowned Clinton the Democratic Party’s “presumptive nominee.” From my perspective, it was an irresponsible call considering the timing and the fact that it relied on superdelegates, elite party insiders who can vote as they please at the Democratic National Convention in July. (We’ll never know if and how that may have affected voter turnout.)

Tuesday, election day, resulted in a letdown for the Sanders campaign. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Shortly before this newspaper’s deadline and just five days since his appearance in Chico, Sanders, trailing Clinton significantly, thanked his volunteers and supporters, tallied his primary and caucus wins, and vowed to move forward with his campaign’s political revolution. He also pledged to fight for every delegate in the last primary next Tuesday in the nation’s capital.

In other words, no concession from Sen. Sanders despite Clinton’s pulling further ahead in pledged delegates. She didn’t get enough of them to clinch the nomination without the vote of the superdelegates at the DNC Convention, but she’d been crowned the “presumptive nominee” irrespectively. She’s the first woman in history to achieve that from a major party.

Here in Butte County, voters overwhelmingly supported Sanders over Clinton (58 percent to 39 percent). Seeing the nomination slip through his grasp is like a punch to the gut for his followers. So, now what? I suspect a mourning period is in order for all of them, yours truly included.