Dew and Dualeh were among the N.C. Sanders delegates planning to attend a 12:30 p.m. Monday gathering the Vermont senator has invited his 1,900 delegates to attend in Philadelphia.
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Bernie Sanders tried to calm tensions among his delegates Monday at the Democratic National Convention but some weren’t in a listening mood, seething over a lengthy primary campaign and a damaging email disclosure. Rather than risk a repeat of that spectacle on a bigger scale, she was excused from the ceremonial task of gaveling the convention to order later Monday. The Clinton and Sanders campaigns joined forces by syncing their floor whip teams to present a united front on the floor.
An email leak that led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz could plague her bid for re-election to Congress, after a challenger said on Monday he would file a complaint alleging she had broken election rules. But he struggled to appeal to black voters and couldn’t match the former secretary of state’s ties to the Democratic establishment that wields significant power in the primary process.
“I think you’re going to see a lot of that kind of thing where the two sides are working together to come to a way of making this party stronger”, Peter D’Allessandro, Sanders’ Indiana campaign manager, said at a meeting of Indiana delegates Monday morning. Efforts to draft her for a White House run past year fell flat, but she maintained her strong standing on the left, with many eagerly watching to see who she whether she would endorse Sanders.
The Democratic National Convention was expected to be a relatively quiet occasion compared to the recent Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “They said, ‘Debbie, you’re fired, ‘ ” he told the crowd, using his catchphrase from “The Apprentice”.
He questioned why Wasserman Schultz was staying on through the convention. Sanders said he will support Clinton in her efforts to avoid a Republican presidency, but some of his supporters were not ready to do the same.
“They throw “party unity” around as if we’re supposed to jump for joy when they mention her name”, said Manuel Zapata, a Sanders delegate from California, referring to Clinton. The $15 minimum wage, single-payer health care, debt-free college – these and other progressive priorities are getting attention they haven’t received in generations.
Some Democrats were quick to change the subject, suggesting that the leak may have been the work of Russian hackers, possibly connected to the Kremlin, who hope to elect Trump.
“Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess”, he wrote on Twitter.
At the GOP convention, Republicans officially endorsed a divisive and unsafe candidate, whose name many fellow Republicans can barely bring themselves to say.
In the usual post-convention “bump”, Trump pulled ahead in at least one opinion poll, after lagging Clinton in most national polls for months. The survey was conducted July 22-24 and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The complaints about Clinton herself were not new: that she supported fracking, that she’s a warmonger, that she was sponsored by Wall Street, that she’s a liar and a cheater.
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Trump has long sought to scoop up disaffected voters who feel Sanders – a self-described democratic socialist – was denied a fair shot at the nomination. Even though Sanders endorsed Clinton, she credits him with creating a movement. Sanders and first lady Michelle Obama will also take the stage.
