LOS ANGELES — Actress Rosario Dawson took the stage at a Bernie Sanders rally here in late June, a “Talk Bernie to Me” tote bag at her side, as hundreds of boisterous supporters cheered and waved signs. Dawson smiled and triumphantly lifted a sign of her own.

“I am still Sanders,” it read.


"All the way!" Dawson shouted, shorthand for taking the pro-Sanders fight all the way to the Democratic convention.

The Democratic primary ended more than three weeks ago. Sanders himself, who wasn’t present at the rally, has toned down his criticism of Hillary Clinton, shifting his focus to defeating Donald Trump and admitting that his “political revolution” will almost certainly end without him in the White House.

But in California, the forever Sanders movement is still Berning full force.

“Here in California, people are very much more revved up and still revved up,” said Steve Dunwoody, a Los Angeles-area Sanders volunteer who was recently elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Activists here point to a number of factors that are fanning the embers. There’s a general distrust of Clinton and of the system that has built up over the long primary campaign. But there are also more local grievances: anger at the slow pace of vote counting after Election Day, as well as a belief that Sanders’ loss in the primary was driven in part by the media declaring Clinton the presumptive nominee the night before voters went to the polls.

It’s a fire that feeds itself. As elsewhere, Sanders supporters in California are a tight-knit group who stay in touch, back each other up on social media and push their revolution forward. To a person, they don’t want to let go of the feeling campaign 2016 has inspired in them.

Some activists even insist that Sanders may yet win California, when all the votes are counted. While Clinton won California on election night, her margin has shrunk a bit, from about 12 percentage points to 8 percentage points. And, three weeks later, counting is not quite wrapped up. There were about 350,000 potential ballots still to be counted as of June 30, according to the California secretary of state’s website. Officials have attributed the glacial pace to thousands of vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still being counted at a local level.

The lingering resentments don’t mean a rift in the Democratic Party will put California up for grabs in November. Democrats far outnumber Republicans here, a state so blue that its upcoming Senate race will be decided by a runoff between two Democratic candidates.

Instead, the fear for Clinton is that the lingering far-left resentment may be shared by like-minded Sanders supporters in swing states, where she will be more dependent on party unity to defeat Trump.

While Clinton and national Democrats evince confidence that Sanders supporters will eventually back her, national polling shows why the continued angst in California is problematic: A recent Bloomberg poll showed that only a bit more than half — 55 percent — of Sanders supporters said they were planning to back Clinton. Some 22 percent said they would back Trump. Another recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found better support for Clinton among Sanders supporters, with 78 percent of Sanders voters backing Clinton, numbers that had improved from a previous poll.

But here, the pragmatic case for party unity has to compete with ubiquitous displays of pro-Sanders passion. In rallies and protests that have continued after the June 7 primary, and in social media posts and stubborn displays of bumper stickers and yard signs, the examples of continuing tension are all over the state. In cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, murals of Sanders’ image still beam down from walls.

For many activists, talk of surrendering the revolution to unite against a common enemy is infuriating.

Michael Seaman, who lives in an unincorporated area outside of the state capital, Sacramento, said he still “prays that Bernie ends up the nominee at the convention.” He grows angry every time he gets an email from the Democratic National Committee, he says, because he views them as pestering him to give up. His wife, he says, plans to leave the Democratic Party because of what they see as an unfair process.

“I believe that both the alleged nominees are not good choices. And I've spent my whole life voting for the lesser of two evils, and I'm sick and tired of it,” he said.

He would like to see the Democratic platform represent some of the progressive ideas Sanders championed. Even then, he said, he’s learned enough about Hillary Clinton that he’s fairly sure he can’t support her.

“The party is putting a lot at risk if it disrespects some of the people involved, people I have met who are previously uninvolved voters and independents,” Seaman said. “They could easily bring people into their tent. Instead they’re marginalizing their party."

Dunwoody, who worked as a campaign staffer for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary and on into the general election, said tensions among many activists in California were higher than at any point he could remember during the similar end-of-the-primary period between Obama and Clinton. He said that he personally was more focused on shaping the party platform and noted that Sanders himself has acknowledged he won’t be the Democratic nominee.

Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally on Sunday, May 22 in Vista, Calif. | AP Photo

“What most Sanders supporters are asking for here isn’t unreasonable,” he said, citing a more progressive platform on income inequality, opposition to fracking and reforms of the election system that reduce the role of money in politics.

With the primary contests over, Sanders himself has tapered his campaign. He hasn’t held any big rallies of late. He even revealed, somewhat stiltedly, that he would vote for Hillary Clinton, though he hasn’t endorsed her. Behind the scenes, trusted aides have talked with Clinton’s operation about the best steps going forward. In general, it’s a slow, somewhat awkward, march to armistice.

The California Democratic Party has taken its own measures to cool the debate: Its executive board passed a resolution the same day it seated its delegation for the Democratic convention that addressed one of Sanders supporters’ top goals, reforming the Democratic primary process.

The resolution supported eliminating caucuses, limiting the number of unpledged delegates and binding delegates to the popular vote. The proposal was jointly written by an unpledged delegate supporting Clinton, Christine Pelosi — daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi — and a pledged Sanders delegate, Daraka Larimore-Hall. Reforming the nominating process has been one of the priorities of Sanders supporters.

State party chairman John Burton has also implored state party delegates to unite and focus on Trump. “We’ve got a common enemy for almost anybody decent,” Burton told state delegates recently. “Donald Trump.”

Naureen Jahangir, a Sanders supporter from Hemet, California, is among those who say they have no intention of backing Clinton. The Sanders campaign was the first time she had been politically involved, and she doesn’t think Clinton can address the issues that Sanders raised during the primary.

Choosing between Clinton and Sanders is a “false choice, because it's a choice between Clinton, Trump, Gary Johnson, and Dr. Jill Stein, at the very least,” she said.

“I will vote for the candidate that best represents my viewpoint as a progressive Democrat, and that will be Jill Stein if Bernie is not the candidate.”

Like a lot of California supporters, Jahangir said she was angered by the the media declaring Clinton had enough delegates to be the nominee before the California vote. Doing so ”appeared to be an attempt at poisoning the California election.” She thinks Sanders winning California could have changed the election in his favor.

Such sentiments hung in the air at the “Still Sanders” rally in Hollywood, which was parked just outside CNN’s building there. CNN, like The Associated Press, which was the first organization to do so, declared Clinton had enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee the night before the California primary by using a tabulation of pledged delegates and superdelegates who had publicly pledged their support to Clinton.

On the same day as the rally, Sanders was on CNN talking about what he does next.

He said there had been some “good gains” in the pursuit of a more progressive platform, but he pressed Clinton to do more if she wanted to win over his supporters.

“If she does the right thing, I am absolutely confident that the vast majority of my voters will vote for her," Sanders said.