Blowback to the emails came from all corners of the political world Sunday – including Clinton supporters and Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders will speak tonight.
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“Damn liar” is how Schultz referred to Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, during a phase of the primary contest in which she had repeatedly and publicly denied any preferential DNC treatment for the former secretary of state’s bid to become the nominee.
Clinton also announced that Wasserman Schultz will serve as honorary chair of the campaign’s “50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country” and that the two will campaign together both to help elect Clinton to the White House and to help with Wasserman Schultz’s Senate re-election campaign. “I think she put the party ahead of herself”. Some delegates, apparently disappointed supporters of her primary rival, Bernie Sanders, jeered and waved signs reading “Thanks for the ‘help, ‘ Debbie”, and more simply, “E-mail”.
That may yet happen at the end of the week, when Hillary Clinton makes history as the first woman to win a major political party nomination to be president, but what’s clear at the outset is that intraparty upheavals are a bipartisan affliction. The site said it was the first part of a forthcoming “Hillary Leaks” series.
“Obama and team never accepted the DNC or cared very much about it, and it showed”, said one senior Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. 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 furor 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 in Cleveland last week.
A cybersecurity firm they employed found traces of at least two sophisticated hacking groups on their network – both of which have ties to the Russian government. The main exception was the email from Brad Marshall, the finance chief, which asserted that Sanders had “skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage” and that he may actually be an atheist.
Overcoming the lingering resentment among Sanders supporters may become the task of the week.
The Democratic nominee-in-waiting will host an organizing event in Charlotte on Monday, as the convention gets underway.
The Vermont senator seemed to indicate that he would continue to assist in the unity effort.
“There is no question but the DNC was on Secretary Clinton’s side from Day One”, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
Still, he said, the most important thing was for Democrats to unite and focus on defeating Trump, whom he called “the worst Republican candidate that I have seen in my lifetime”. And Clinton will be introduced by her daughter, Chelsea.
Sanders’ ire toward Wasserman Schultz has been building for months.
Whether a roll call will be taken to nominate Clinton has been a topic of negotiations between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the soon-to-be former chair of the Democratic National Committee. “Now the question looms over us here in Philadelphia: Why not immediately?”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida that she will step down as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee after the convention over leaked emails that reveal earlier DNC attempts to undermine Sanders’ presidential campaign.
Sanders supporters were already dismayed that Clinton passed over liberal favorites like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of MA to select the more moderate U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate.
Meanwhile, the party’s communications director announced that longtime political operative and pundit Donna Brazile, now the DNC’s vice chair, will take over as interim chair through the election. Story after story about how she was feathering her own political nest first and then worrying about Obama and the broader party second – or not at all. But it was her role overseeing the 2016 primary process that ultimately led to her undoing.
Wasserman Schultz will still open and close the convention, she said in a statement, and “address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans”.
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Many in the Sanders camp have also voiced disappointment with Clinton’s choice of a center-left running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, instead of a more liberal firebrand like Senator Elizabeth Warren. But in the last couple of years, she had reportedly fallen out of favor with some Obama loyalists who saw her interests in self-promotion conflicting with her party role.
