Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic operative and well-known television commentator, will serve as interim chair.
Advertisement
However, despite reports of an increasingly limited role at the convention, she added: “As Party Chair, this week I will open and close the Convention and I will address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans”.
Sanders called it the “right decision” in a statement. And her 11-hour testimony before the House Benghazi Committee a year ago stands out as a centerpiece of her second presidential campaign. But they do care about ensuring Sanders loyalists turn out for the Democrats in November, and standing by the embattled Wasserman Schultz looked like one way to ensure that wouldn’t happen.
“There’s evidence Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole those emails, and there are experts saying they are releasing these emails for the objective of helping Donald Trump”, Mook told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Sunday on “State of the Union“. In truth, they don’t show anything of the sort.
How the emails were stolen hasn’t been confirmed.
Wasserman Schultz’s swift ouster underscores party leaders’ desire to avoid convention confrontations with Sanders’ loyal supporters.
Monday’s convention program is expected to open with a showing of some of the party’s biggest political stars, and it will also highlight some of the party’s most progressive voices.
One email features DNC staffers appearing to ponder ways to undercut Sanders, an insurgent Democrat who had a bitter relationship with party leadership.
“She should resign, period”, Sanders said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”.
Earlier Sunday, David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Obama’s presidential campaigns and a CNN senior political commentator, said Wasserman Schultz should resign. “And I think we need a new chair who is going to lead us in a very different direction”.
By 2011, President Barack Obama recommended she take control of the DNC, even though she had backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.
The furore was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention last week, and overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton’s coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the November 8 USA presidential election.
“Our people are pleading for change, but government is in the way”, he said during his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
Sanders issued a statement calling for a new direction for the party that would welcome the working class and young voters – and remain neutral in future Democratic primary contests.
But the meeting also revealed unhappiness among Sanders supporters with Clinton’s choice of Sen.
Thousands of demonstrators are taking to Philadelphia’s sweltering streets Sunday, cheering, chanting and beating drums in the first major protests ahead of the Democratic National Convention, as the city wilts during a heat wave. Clinton said her campaign is “one that is about building bridges, not walls, embracing the diversity that makes our country great”.
Wasserman Schultz has served as DNC chairwoman for more than five years and was the first woman nominated by a sitting president to that position.
I’m actually surprised she was able to hang on as the DNC chair as long as she has.
Advertisement
Ross says “you have to be out there” to show officers, protesters and the public you’re with them. Schultz is facing a Bernie-backed opponent for her Florida Congressional seat, and aggrieved Florida Bernie supporters have already filed a lawsuit against her for “rigging the system”.
