A big cache of hacked anti-Sanders emails exposing a calculated bid by party insiders to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton’s primary rival has cast a long shadow on the Democratic convention in Philadelphia and forced party chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz to quit abruptly.
The resignation by Wasserman Schultz, a long-time supporter of Clinton, came even as several thousand pro-Sanders protesters marched through Philadelphia on Sunday to voice their opposition to Clinton, regardless of the fact that the Vermont Senator himself has endorsed her after losing a long and grueling primary race.
Following the embarrassing publication by Wikileaks of over 19,000 emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, the Clinton campaign on Sunday blamed Russia for the hacking, terming it an effort to help Republican nominee Donald Trump, someone known to be well-disposed towards President Vladimir Putin.
“Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, took all these emails and now are leaking them out through these websites….It’s troubling that some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” Clinton’s campaign chief Robby Mook told ABC News.
The Republicans were quick to pooh-pooh the accusations. Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort termed the claims “absurd” and “crazy”, commenting: “Wasserman Schultz resigned over her failure to secure the DNC's email servers and the rigged system she set up with the Clinton campaign.” He said it was now time for Clinton to “drop out over her failure to safeguard top secret, classified information both on her unauthorized home server and while traveling abroad (as Secretary of State)”.
The Wikileaks email dump and the resignation by Wasserman Schultz came just as party delegates from across America began gathering in Philadelphia for the four-day convention that will formally anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee to take on Trump in the November presidential election.
Sanders himself and First lady Michelle Obama are among the top speakers slated to address the opening day’s convention later on Monday. President Barack Obama will speak on Wednesday, while Clinton herself will deliver her acceptance speech on Thursday.
The Democratic convention follows close on the heels of last week’s Republican convention in Cleveland which, for all its missteps, appears to have given Trump a significant bounce in polls. A CNN national poll, released on Monday, said that Trump now leads Clinton 48% to 45%. Prior to that convention, Clinton had led with 49% against Trump’s 42%.
Wasserman Schultz’s announcement that she would resign at the end of the Philadelphia convention came hours after Sanders told Sunday talk shows that she was not unfit to be the DNC chair “not only for these awful emails, which revealed the prejudice of the DNC, but also because we need a party that reaches out to working people and young people, and I don’t think her leadership style is doing that”.
“The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race,” Sanders said, but in comments that were bound to be heart-warming for the Clinton campaign, he indicated that he would not force the email controversy beyond a point since it was important to defeat Trump.
One of the leaked anti-Sanders emails appeared to show how DNC staffers were collaborating to cast Sanders as an atheist in order to undermine him among southern voters. Quizzed on this aspect, Sanders told CNN: “I am not an atheist. But aside from all of that, it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign. It goes without saying the function of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates -- to be fair and even-minded.”
Clinton, commenting on the resignation, lauded her leadership of the DNC over the past five years. Significantly, she also named Wasserman Schultz as honorary chair of her campaign’s 50-State Programme, remarking that there was no one better than her when it comes to fighting Republicans. Clinton also promised to help her with her bid for re-election to the House of Representatives.