On the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abruptly announced that she will resign her position after the convention as part of the fallout from emails leaked from the DNC on Friday night.
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“It could threaten their agreement”, one Democrat said, referring to the deal reached between Clinton and Sanders about the convention, delegates and the DNC.
“Her resignation opens up the possibility of new leaders at the top of the Democratic Party that will stand with working people”, he said.
The Sanders campaign also protested her decision to temporarily limit their access to the party’s digital infrastructure after staffers were discovered to have taken advantage of a brief data breach and gained access to other candidates’ voter profiling.
Wasserman Schultz, who has always been under fire for the appearance of partiality toward Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, announced her resignation in a statement Sunday afternoon.
Already on Sunday, hundreds of Bernie Sanders supporters gathered to march through the city center.
Others showed Wasserman Schultz criticizing Sanders for not being a member of the party and saying he would never be president.
Citing an anonymous Democrat, CNN said Wasserman Schultz’s planned speech was removed in order not to stoke anger in the Sanders camp, especially now that he is working with Clinton to defeat Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
The theory here is that the Russians would prefer a Trump presidency to a Clinton presidency, because Trump has offered some praise of Russian president Vladimir Putin and has suggested the US might not defend North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries from a Russian attack. One indicated Wasserman Schultz had asked staffers to take Canova’s name out of a headline on a statement that was being sent out in response to Sanders’s endorsement of Canova.
In videos from the breakfast, protesters – some holding Bernie Sanders signs – shouted over Wasserman Schultz as she attempted to speak in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic National Convention is fertile fundraising ground this week for one Florida congressional candidate, but not in the traditional sense of high-priced donor dinners or lobbyist happy hours.
U.S. officials suspect the email dump is the work of Russian hackers who were discovered in DNC servers earlier this year, and experts believe the coordinated release of the documents on the eve of the convention are an effort by Moscow to meddle in the USA presidential election.
Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of liberals, will deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention.
The emails, leaked Friday by Wikileaks and apparently from a batch hacked earlier this year by hackers widely reported to be in Russian Federation, show frustration at the DNC with repeated claims by the Sanders campaign that the DNC is not neutral.
For Wasserman Schultz, her resignation marks a the completion of a protracted fall from grace, as her tenure atop the party’s governing body has been marked by persistent turmoil, public flubs, and financial and organizational difficulties.
Wasserman Schultz demurred when asked whether she would debate Canova, a political novice who has Sanders’ endorsement, ahead of the August 30 primary.
“People like this, it’s like if it wasn’t within the party, this is the kind of thing you go to jail for”, Balanoff said. The hacked DNC emails fed the suspicion of Sanders’ supporters and sapped Clinton’s campaign of some of its energy following a well-received rollout Saturday of her running mate, Virginia Sen.
She will not have a speaking role at this week’s convention, according to several reports.
The emails, though not incredibly damning on their own terms, certainly tend to confirm the main fears Sanders supporters offered about her management of the DNC and leant legitimacy to his complaints at just the time the Democratic Party was trying to bury the Sanders/Clinton hatchet.
“We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive – we know that that’s not the Florida we know”, she told the crowd.
“She seems oblivious to the volcano that will erupt if she walked into that [convention] hall”, said a veteran Democratic operative, who added that as of Sunday morning, Wasserman Schultz believed the uproar would pass. “I mean, that is just totally unacceptable behavior”, he said.
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“She lost the confidence of the President’s political team after it appeared she started using the DNC as her personal PAC, rather than reliably projecting his priorities and those of the party”, said a former White House aide.
