Are You Saying Boo, Or Boo-nie Sanders?

As any sportsball fan will tell you, if you can't handle the boos, don't come to Philly.

The Day 1 speakers at the DNC handled the boos admirably, mostly by orating right over them. Elijah Cummings faced down chants of "No TPP!" which inspired thisexquisite conniption by Yr Editrix.

Cory Booker, bizarrely, heard people chanting "Black lives matter!" as if he had to be told. He steamrolled them with a speech about the power of love. It was like Huey P. Newton and the News.

Elizabeth Warren was treated to "We trusted you!" They trusted her until she told them something they didn't want to hear, which is a real mark of maturity.

Multiple speakers who weren't Bernie heard "Bernie!" yelled at them, as if they were Bernie. One such nonbernie was Sarah Silverman, who replied, in a departure from her prepared remarks, "Can I just say, to the Bernie or bust people, you're being ridiculous."

Maybe that wasn't too nice, but you don't invite Sarah Silverman to your party for nice.

From first hand accounts, it appears that the hecklers were a small but vocal minority. Nate Silver very scientifically and with spreadsheet algorithm data cross-tabbed up the wazoo pretty much just ear-balled the room and declared it to be so:

How many people were booing mentions of Hillary? I'd guess 2-5% of the delegates, or something like that. A few loud pockets of people.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 25, 2016 

To be fair, Bernie Buskers weren't the only ones raining down the boos. When Bernie himself took the stage and touted the "political revolution" his campaign helped launch, several Hillary backers took this as an invitation to enunciate their own vowels of disapproval. They were certainly not saying "Boo-nie Sanders!"

But for all that, I still hope and predict that the boo-birds mostly spent themselves on Day 1 and will be less disruptive going forward. If you want a tortured, probably baseless reason to be optimistic, you can choose to see the dissent on display at the DNC as healthy. Contrast that with Republicans cheering for a bunch of stuff they booed four years ago, like LGBTQ rights, or booing at stuff they never boo, like free trade. I'd rather have a party that disagrees internally over substantive matters than one that seems to have no fixed principles apart from the will to power.

But who knows. On tonight's schedule we have Bill Clinton, who will probably be booed a bit. We'll also hear from mothers who lost children in encounters with police. Sounds like the perfect opportunity for six people to yell three words about their favorite unrelated hobbyhorse, five hundred times! We'll be helping you through it all with a liveblog, so fear not, drink deep, and pass that shit to the left.

[ Bustle / CNN ]