I have re-read Cynthia Dill’s column of July 24, in which she said that she expected boorish behavior by some Bernie Sanders supporters at the Democratic National Convention.

A minority of Sanders supporters met her negative expectations by, for example, repeating anti-Hillary Clinton chants copied from the Republican National Convention and booing a Congressional Medal of Honor winner when he began speaking. Dill’s comments have produced three attacks on her, a singularly vitriolic one in Seth Berner’s Maine Voices column on Aug. 6 and two in letters on Aug. 14 and Aug. 22.

One letter writer called Dill’s column a “diatribe.” Diatribe fairly describes that letter and Seth Berner’s column. He called her a “Democratic Donald Trump” and continued: “If Dill wants Clinton to win, her candidate is probably going to need votes from those distasteful ‘fringy elements.’ … The more purple Dill’s prose, the more the Democratic Party seems … unhinged. Dill’s language is not a good way to convince people not … in her choir that Clinton and the DNC have values worth supporting.”

Therefore, if these extremists’ failure to vote for Clinton enables a Trump victory, is it the fault of “purple prose” denouncing their bad behavior at the convention? Aren’t they responsible for their own actions?

I was a Clinton delegate at the Maine Democratic Convention and had a small foretaste of what happened at the national convention.

When I addressed the convention on the superdelegate issue, I was greeted with cries of “shame” from a few people, and when Barney Frank gave the keynote speech he was repeatedly heckled with cries of “sell-out,” a totally unjustified charge.

The number of people involved in rude behavior was small, but they were loud. Afterward I received personal apologies from several Sanders backers.

It is simply not true that Cynthia Dill attacked all Sanders supporters.

Meredith N. Springer

Scarborough

Copy the Story Link