The Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns developed a system to prevent the Democratic National Convention floor from descending into chaos and angry boos, according to “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (Crown, out now).
Robby Mook (Clinton’s campaign manager) and Jeff Weaver (Sander’s manager) devised a joint command operation behind the arena’s main stage, an area which functioned as a “nerve center from which the two camps could exert control over their delegates.” The two teams also created a text-messaging distribution list so they could communicate quickly whenever things started to get out of hand.
“When a Bernie supporter raised an anti-Clinton sign, a whip team member in the convention hall could relay the message quickly to the boiler room. The team there would send a note to Bernie and Hillary aides on the floor, who would ask the person to take it down. The flash-speed communications network would turn out to be a major factor in transforming what was a tumultuous convention inside the hall into a unified one on television. That is, it looked a lot different to folks watching at home than it did to participants inside an arena with plenty of anti-Clinton Bernie delegates.”
At one point, things had gotten so out of hand among angry Sanders supporters that Sanders had to text his own delegates asking them to calm down. “I ask you as a personal courtesy to me not to engage in any kind of protest on the floor,” he wrote.
“Mook was most keenly aware of the optical illusion the two camps had pulled off,” Allen and Parnes write. “During the convention, a woman approached him and said that the American flags in the arena were beautiful. ‘That was to hide the crazy people shouting things,” he thought. ‘But it looked great.’”