Near Philadelphia’s City Hall, an obese woman wearing a marijuana leaf bikini was telling a television reporter why she supported Bernie Sanders. City Hall, once the tallest building in the world, is a gloriously magnificent edifice whose pillars are held up by representatives of all the races of the world and whose clock tower is topped by a 37-foot statue of William Penn, was besieged by Sandernistas.
The Democratic convention was underway. Bernie Sanders had endorsed Hillary Clinton. But his followers still believed. If not in Bernie, then in the radical movement that had coalesced around him.
A cheerful woman wearing a “Bernie or Bust” t-shirt told me that even if Bernie won, she would be voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party. It was unclear how Bernie Sanders could possibly win. Let alone how Jill Stein could win. But Bernie and Jill were against drones, banks and GMOs while Hillary Clinton was for them. And the mood grew uglier as the temperature approached one hundred degrees.