In her statement, Clinton said Wasserman Schultz would be the honorary chair of the Clinton campaign’s 50-state program and would “continue to serve as a surrogate” for the campaign on a national and state level.
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On Sunday, Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party’s convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks.
Last week, during the Republican convention, Wasserman Schultz used a briefing with reporters to claim that the gathering had brought to the fore an “anti-Semitic environment that Donald Trump embraces” and that the “anti-Semitism that is threaded throughout the Republican Party of late goes straight to the feet of Donald Trump”. “I think she has served this party well for five years”, he said, referring to her role in helping Barack Obama get re-elected in 2012, and, he predicts, will contribute to getting Hillary Clinton over the top this fall.
And she’s stressing her support for Hillary Clinton. “There’s simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbie”. As he demanded Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, Sanders made clear he wants to see Clinton in the White House.
The emails could boost Sanders supporters’ charge that the DNC was biased toward Clinton – a position Sanders himself underscored when he endorsed Wasserman Schultz’s primary opponent in her Florida congressional race. Wasserman Schultz’s tenure at the head of the DNC has been rocky nearly since the moment she took over the job in 2011.
The scandal is an unwanted distraction as the Democratic Party tries to paint itself as paint itself as unified at the four-day convention.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will speak Monday night, and Rep. Joe Kennedy III is expected to introduce her.
The job of a national party chair for the Democrats or Republicans is demanding and unrelenting.
Campaigning in North Carolina, Trump seemed to revel in the Democrats’ commotion, telling supporters that Clinton made a mistake by not choosing a more liberal running mate to appease Sanders’ base. The email correspondences divulged that party officials intended on emphasizing Sanders’ Jewishness and asking him if he is in fact an Atheist as he proclaims, with the understanding that in more religious states, the subject would harm him. The statement was signed by DNC leaders, though Wasserman Schultz’s name was notably absent.
Several Democratic sources told CNN that the leaked emails are a big source of contention and may incite tensions between the Clinton and Sanders camps heading into the Democratic convention’s Rules Committee meeting this weekend.
On Sunday morning the DNC was in lockdown, not commenting on the percolating uproar.
She outlined collaboration with Bernie Sanders representatives on convention planning and hiring of Sanders campaign staff by the Clinton campaign. She should step down, he said, “not only because of the prejudice I think [the DNC] showed during the campaign but also because I think we need new leadership that will open up that party” to working people, young people and “have the kind of vitality we need”.
Wasserman Schultz was initially supposed to gavel the convention into session, but that was changed just hours before it started.
Still, Sanders and others feel that the DNC chair should remain neutral during a nominating process.
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Instead it was Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, in her capacity of secretary of the Democratic National Committee.
