Chaos reigned Sunday ahead of the Democratic National Convention, as the party’s head was forced to quit, thousands of protesters took to the streets and delegates threatened a walk-out over Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential pick.
On the eve of the four-day convention to nominate the county’s first female presidential candidate, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in disgrace over the hack of emails that showed DNC staffers favoring Clinton over her then rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Meanwhile, throngs of Sanders supporters marched and pounded on drums, chanting “Hell no, DNC — we won’t vote for Hillary” in the sweltering heat during the first in an expected series of protests in Philadelphia.
A leading Sanders supporter, Norman Solomon, also said a “vast majority” of the socialist’s delegates were considering turning their backs — or even walking out of the Wells Fargo Center — during Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s acceptance speech to run as Clinton’s second-in-command.
The ouster of Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, came just hours after Democrats revealed that she had been replaced as their convention’s chairwoman by little-known Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio)....
Meanwhile, Democratic sources told CNN that the hacked emails had inflamed Sanders supporters and could destroy the party-unity deal between Sanders and Clinton, with one Democrat saying: “It’s gas meets flame.”
And desperate Clinton aides floated a conspiracy theory that Russian hackers had engineered the email scandal in a bid to help elect Trump....
Wasserman Schultz will be replaced as interim party chair by Donna Brazile, an ardent Hillary Clinton supporter...
A longtime Democrat strategist, Brazile ran Vice President Al Gore’s disastrous 2000 presidential campaign — which saw him start wearing “reassuring,” earth-toned clothing in a failed bid to win over voters before losing to George W. Bush in an election decided by the US Supreme Court.
Previously, she had to resign from Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign for publicly alleging that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush had repeatedly cheated on his wife.
