Race to White House - Bernie bats for Hillary, but stumped by fans

PHILADELPHIA: There could not have been a more appropriate song than `Bridge Over Troubled Waters' for Paul Simon to render at the Democratic National Convention on Monday as the party closed ranks against the insurgency by Bernie Sanders' supporters on a steamy Philadelphia evening boiling with the fury of the idealistic.

In city squares and street corners, on sidewalks and in parks, the young and disenchanted remonstrated and demonstrated across Philadelphia, carrying posters and placards that called for Hillary Clinton to be sent to prison, or at the very least denied the presidential nomination in favour of their hero Bernie Sanders.

Police and security made it arduous for many of them to go to the Wells Fargo Centre where party grandees tried to choreograph proceedings aimed at muting dissent. It didn't work. Enough supporters got in to give Sanders a three-minute standing ovation, and his address endorsing Clinton for the nomination was received with boos and jeers, even as Hillary acolytes tried to drown it out with chants of “Hillary! Hillary!“

Some Sanders supporters went as far as to adopt the slogan of the Republican far-right -“Lock her up!'' “It is no secret that Hillary and I disagree on a number of issues... That's what democracy is about,'' Sanders said in an effort to mollify his adoring flock, many of who wept openly as they heard him officially throw in the towel and back an establishment figure they clearly despise.

“I understand that many people here and around the co untry are disappointed... I think it's fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am.“ But, he advised, the time had come to put the nomination fight behind. “Based on her ideas and her leadership, Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the US,“ he said amid boos. “I am going to do all I can to make that happen.“

The real credit for calming the passions in the Wells Fargo arena though should go to first lady Michelle Obama, who preceded Sanders. In an uplifting speech that presages a future political career should she choose to go the way of Hillary Clinton, she eviscerated Donald Trump contemptuously , without once taking his name.

“Don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great, that somehow we need to make it great again. This right now, is the greatest country on Earth,“ she told a rapturous crowd in an oblique reference to Trump's campaign slogan “Make America Great Again“.

But it was her full and fronton endorsement of Clinton that was striking, given the history of disquiet between the two women. Soothing the rancour in the ranks, the first lady gently admonished the party flock: “When crisis hits, we don't turn against each other. No, we listen to each other, we lean on each other, because we are always stronger together... I am here tonight because I know that that is the kind of president Hillary Clinton will be.''

It also set the stage for Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, another insurgent Clinton foe who has come around to supporting her. She called Trump a cheat, a narcissist, a financial parasite preying on the poor who has no real ideas and who wants to turn America in a land of fear and hate.

But it was the Sanders finale, and the party's overall efforts to douse the anger of its young idealists that provided the drama on a torrid day. Party leaders wrote a craven apology to Sanders for undermining him in the primaries. Sanders finally pleaded his supporters to back down on their protests.

How the silver-haired 74-year old senator from Vermont has enthralled the youth of America will be studied for generations in political circles. But such is the rapture he has generated that even the Clinton cabal (the former president, who will speak on Tuesday evening) looked on in amazement.