I was a Sanders delegate to the Nevada State Dem convention, and an eyewitness to what happened. There was a lot of shouting, a good deal of which was justified by the condescending attitude displayed by Roberta Lange during he proceedings. No chairs were thrown. One guy picked up a chair in frustration, and was talked down by another guy. He put the chair back down.
The visuals were not good. All those Vegas Metro cops lined up across the front of the stage? That was because a couple minutes before, the guy in charge of the venue (the ballroom at the Paris LV casino/hotel) came in and told us we had to vacate the hall — that we’d overstayed the contracted time already, and that the staff needed to clean up and ready the room for another event. So the cops were there to make sure everybody went home. In the memes it looks like they were there to put down a riot, but that’s really not what happened at all.
There was a lot of shouting. It was a convention. Have you EVER seen a political convention where there isn’t a lot of shouting and boisterous behavior? I know I haven’t.
The regrettable (and inexcusable) thing that DID occur was that some people called and texted Roberta Lange with threatening messages. That was wrong, and if the evidence justifies it, prosecutions should result.
But in the convention hall itself, the picture John Ralston painted might as well have been a painting, as opposed to honest journalism. He had decided that Hillary was the one, and Sanders was a joke, and wrote accordingly.
It is notable that John Ralston lost his local PBS show and his column in the Vegas paper soon afterwards, so it wasn’t just Sanders supporters who were concerned over his bias.
