Pro-Sanders delegates protest during the Democratic National Convention on Monday. | Getty Sanders supporters reject Democrats' unity plea Asked whether the senator still leads his movement, a senior aide says, ‘I’m not sure.’

PHILADELPHIA — Bernie Sanders built a movement around challenging the Democratic machine, but it may not be his to lead anymore.

Now into a second day of protests in hot, sweaty Pennsylvania, agitated Sanders backers are infuriated with the Democratic Party after leaked emails show the establishment putting its finger on the scale for Hillary Clinton and damaging Sanders during this year's highly-contested primaries.


The resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done little to ease their anger. Indeed, Sanders supporters described it as the least of their demands now.

"Getting thrown crumbs is not change," said Amy Kaplan, a 60-year national park ranger and Sanders backer from Sausalito, California. "And the last 48 hours have been crumbs. It's very patronizing. Like, are we idiots? That's how they're treating us. Like we're idiots."

While Sanders may think he has extracted his largest piece of flesh with Wasserman Schultz’s ouster, lingering resentment now threatens to undermine the carefully choreographed convention that Democrats had gloated would be free of the internal drama that rocked the GOP’s show last week.

As protests erupted inside and outside of the convention hall throughout the entire opening day of the convention, the Sanders camp worked behind the scenes to smooth things over, a Clinton official said. They reached out to the Clinton camp to express concern that emotions were still running high among Sanders supporters, despite Wasserman Schultz's exit— a concern Clinton officials shared as the proceedings kicked off. The Sanders effort at maintaining calm involved campaign manager Jeff Weaver and senior strategist Mark Longabaugh. On the Clinton side, campaign manager Robby Mook and senior adviser Charlie Baker were on board.

Clinton aide Marlon Marshall met on Monday with Rich Pelletier, Sanders' deputy campaign manager, to find ways to prevent disruptions, while Sanders directly urged his backers to remain calm via text message.

"I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor. Its of utmost importance you explain this to your delegations - Bernie," read the message, which also went out via email.

But as the convention opened Monday, they didn't appear to have gotten the message: Protesters blocked major thoroughfares in Philadelphia, forcing buses to reroute, while Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge was roundly booed as she helped to kick off the evening's program. Some attendees wore tape over their mouths to signify that, in their view, the DNC was silencing them. And as comedian Sarah Silverman brought up her support for Clinton, the California delegation began to boo loudly. While pro-Clinton voices ultimately overwhelmed them, a woman bearing a "No TPP" sign made a cut-throat gesture as Silverman went on to call the "Bernie or Bust" delegates "ridiculous."

Earlier in the night, as Rep. Elijah Cummings spoke, protesters chanted, "No TPP!" and waved signs protesting the trade agreement — it was a protest group that would go on to be vocal throughout the night.

"I'm here to support Bernie and a progressive agenda," said Caroline Hooper, a delegate from Minnesota. "I'm worried about the TPP. It's not a fair trade deal."

When asked if she'd support Clinton, Hooper replied, "I'm a Democrat." But she wouldn't say yes.

Meanwhile, outside the hall, some protesters were deliberately crossing the police barricades, risking detention, according to video posted by a BuzzFeed reporter. The smells of marijuana and incense filled the air, while small clusters of protesters chanted, "Hell No DNC, we won't vote for Hill-a-ry" and "Bernie beats Trump."

Sidewalk chalk plastered across the street read, "Bern the DNC" and "Admit it, the Dems are f***ing us over."

Sanders' big test came Monday night when he spoke at the start of the DNC not long after Massachusetts Sen, Elizabeth Warren, another liberal hero who his supporters had hoped might get more serious consideration to join the Clinton ticket rather than the more centrist Tim Kaine.

The Vermont senator's speech was punctuated by chants of "Bernie! Bernie!" as his emotional supporters, some of them with tears in their eyes, protested his call to unite behind Clinton, even as he vouched for her progressive bona fides.

And after Sanders's speech, it was clear that a significant portion of Sanders's backers would never come around, no matter how forcefully he endorsed Clinton. A group of about 50 Sanders supporters gathered in the halls of the Wells Fargo center chanting: "A vote for Hillary is a vote for Trump." A man gallivanted through the halls screaming: "This party is dead!"

"Never Hillary means never," said Motecuzoma Sanchez of Stockton, Calif. "Can we trust her? I say no ... there's a lot of anger right now."

But the anger was not being taken out on Sanders.

"Elizabeth Warren broke our hearts," said Luci Riley of Oakland, California, who cried during Sanders' speech and made a gag motion while he spoke warmly of Clinton.

Still, Sanders plans to continue the outreach this week, making the rounds at several breakfasts hosted by many of the 23 states and territories that he won earlier this year. There, he's thanking them for their support, urging them to help field new down-ballot candidates who echo his views on everything from banking regulations to climate change. But he’s also making clear he has endorsed Clinton, aiming to put an end to the dream of those still searching for some way to install him as the nominee.

"I don't really believe in my heart he truly supports her. I feel like he's giving us subliminal messages, 'Vote for Jill Stein. Vote for Jill Stein.' That's the wave I'm picking up," said Jelisa Mone, a 27-year-old from Charlotte, NC, who was selling $20 T-shirts depicting scowling Clinton and Trump faces and a '#BadVsWorse' hashtag.

Stein began to address a group outside the convention when a storm forced attendees to seek shelter. She and couple of reporters huddled under I-95, where she praised Sanders and, as a small crowd assembled, went on to call Clinton a "war-monger."

“Yes, I will feel terrible if Donald Trump is elected, she said. "But I also will feel terrible if Hillary Clinton is elected.”

Some elected officials acknowledged that not everyone would necessarily get on board with Clinton.

“There may be folks who in the end — and there may not be many of them — that may be more angry at Hillary Clinton than they are at Donald Trump,” said liberal Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) in an interview. “The vast majority of Democrats in this country understand that we have one job and one job only and that is to defeat Donald Trump.”

And Rep. John Garamendi of California said that the handful of Sanders supporters booing everyone from Eva Longoria to Silverman were a minority of the divided delegation.

"It was about 10 percent booing. It's the same 10 percent. They're loud, they're passionate about Bernie and they're passionate about the work they did," he said. "I've already seen over the last three hours people who were angry when they arrived here, they're coming around to the reality that were coming together."

"Welcome to conventions," he added. "They want to be heard. They should be."

Earlier in the day, Sanders addressed an overflow crowd of more than 1,000 supportive delegates in the city's cavernous convention center, where he said Wasserman Shultz's resignation "opens up the possibility of new leadership” and added that it “opens doors of the party to those people who want real change.” The crowd of delegates erupted in roars.

Sanders backers were less enthusiastic when he told the 1,900 delegates he had amassed over the caucuses and primaries that they should line up behind Clinton, triggering boos.

It was a bizarre moment for Sanders, who grew a campaign out of nothing to become one of the most powerful political figures in the country.

“Folks are going through a grieving process. They worked day and night to advance someone that most political pundits said never had a shot,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sanders’s only Senate backer in his campaign. “Folks who were booing weren’t booing Bernie … they were just showing their affection for him. Like I said, it’s a hard transition to make.”

Other progressives said the emotion on view in Philadelphia was just a reflection of how engaged this wing of the party is.

“One hallmark of effective organizing is never say: ‘That’s completely enough,’” said Adam Green, a co-founder for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which wants Sanders to push Clinton on policy issues from Wall Street reform to trade.

And still others said they would take their cues from Sanders, however grudgingly.

"I'm very much a Bernie person but I can read the tea leaves, "said Mike Adelman, a delegate from Mississippi. "I don't want to see Donald Trump as president. I think he is an evil person."

He has reservations about Clinton, he continued, but said he'd ultimately follow the senator's lead.

"I would honor him and he wants unity, "he said.

But a more pressing question in the wake of Sanders' speech is how much control he even still has over his own supporters at this point .

“That's the problem. I think he will be good and his speech will be good,” said one Democrat involved in unifying disparate wings of the party here. “But it's a ‘movement.’”

"Hillary Clinton is corrupt," said Anita Green of Missoula, Montana, the state's first female transgender delegate illustrating that Democrat's concerns. "The Montana delegation is Bernie or bust."

Asked whether the senator’s movement is no longer his to lead, one of his senior campaign staffers shrugged, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

The Clinton and Sanders camps have merged their floor teams, the Clinton official said, in an effort to quell dissent on the floor. And Democratic leaders insisted they’ll come out of Philadelphia more unified, with a majority of Sanders’ supporters planning to vote for Clinton.

But that may be wishful thinking.

"I am, through the convention, here [as] an elected representative for the Bernie Sanders supporters in my state," said Daphne Charette, a delegate from Virginia. "My job is to stand firmly behind Bernie Sanders throughout."

She wasn't ready to endorse Clinton yet, even though Sanders has. "I'm not ready to talk about the fall until the fall," she said.

A new CNN poll out Monday found that 45 percent of registered Democrats surveyed still wanted Sanders to win the nomination — and that Clinton’s own support within her own party had dropped from 55 percent to 49 percent over the past month. The same poll showed Trump leading Clinton.

And many of the party faithful filing into Philadelphia expressed genuine uncertainty over where their convention could go too.

“We’ve always been a more lively group anyway. We’ve never been a convention that’s very quiet and staid anyway,” California Rep. Doris Matsui told POLITICO in a Monday morning interview aboard an Amtrak train from Washington to Philadelphia.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight,” she added. “But you know what? We’re all going to be OK.”

Representatives from the loosely affiliated Bernie Delegate Network on Monday said they were actively looking into an alternative to Kaine as the Democratic vice presidential nominee — a highly quixotic quest. The activists are similarly outraged not only by the trove of WikiLeaks emails from the DNC but also the feeling that Trump had sought out progressive support more than Clinton.

"We are true progressives and find it a little disrespectful that a mad man like Donald Trump is reaching out to the progressive vote more than Hillary Clinton is. Very, very disrespectful. That's all I really want to say right now," said Manuel Zapata, a Bernie Delegates Network activist.

Two Ohio delegates, Werner Lang and Dennis Slottrick, smuggled in an oversized Bernie Sanders sign they were displaying on the floor.

"We didn't come all this way to be cheerleaders for Hillary," Lang said.

He called Trump a "fascist" whom he opposed, but wouldn't say whether he backs Clinton.

"That doesn't mean I support evil whether greater or lesser," he said.

Shane Goldmacher, Annie Karni and Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.