Infighting mars Hillary’s moment
INFIGHTING, SECURITY BREACH THREATEN DEMOCRATS’ QUEST FOR UNITY
On the heels of a tumultuous Republican convention, Hillary Clinton’s hopes that her gathering in Philadelphia will show off a forward-looking Democratic Party united behind her steady leadership appear in jeopardy.
The Democratic National Convention was set to kick off Monday as a week of optimistic celebration with high-powered elected officials and celebrities re-introducing Clinton to a general election audience.
But she must overcome lingering bitterness among supporters of defeated rival Bernie Sanders and a political mess and lastminute leadership shakeup of the party’s own making — along with accusations of Cold War-style international intrigue, after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails on the website WikiLeaks, suggesting the Democratic National Committee had played favourites for Clinton during the primary.
The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, announced abruptly Sunday afternoon that she would step down at week’s end. Sanders had called earlier Sunday for her departure.
Wasserman Schultz has been a lightning rod throughout the presidential campaign for criticism from the party’s more liberal wing, with Sanders repeatedly accusing the national party of favouring Clinton despite officially being neutral.
Adding intrigue, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said “Russian state actors” may have hacked into DNC computers “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.”
“It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian,” Mook said.
Mook told ABC News that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke in to 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.”
Some cyber-security experts in the U.S. and overseas agree with Mook’s extraordinary claim, although Trump campaign officials rejected the suggestion as absurd.
Late last week, hours before the records were released by the website WikiLeaks, the White House convened a high-level security meeting to discuss reports that Russia had hacked into systems at the Democratic National Committee.
Although other experts remain skeptical of a Russian role, the hacking incident has caused alarm within the Clinton campaign and also in the national security arena. Officials from various intelligence and defence agencies, including the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, attended the White House meeting Thursday, on the eve of the email release.
If the accusation is true, it would be the first time the Russians have actively tried to influence an election in this manner, analysts said.
“I’m not shocked, but I’m disappointed,” Sanders said of the hacked emails, one of which questioned whether his religious beliefs could be used against him, on ABC’s This Week.
CONVENTION
Meanwhile, Clinton and President Barack Obama each released statements Sunday praising Wasserman Schultz’s leadership. “There’s simply no one better at taking the fight to the Republicans than Debbie,” Clinton said.
The self-inflicted wounds could hamper the Clinton campaign’s effort to portray the party’s convention in a different light from the justconcluded Republican gathering in Cleveland. Trump accepted the GOP nomination, but party divisions flared when his chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, refused to endorse the business mogul.
Trump appeared to relish in the Democratic chaos Sunday, writing, “The Dems Convention is cracking up.”
At the Republican convention, Trump cast himself as the law-and-order candidate in a nation suffering under crime and hobbled by immigration, sticking to the gloom-and-doom theme.
As he accepted the Republican nomination, Trump said: “The legacy of Hillary Clinton is death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”
In return, Clinton seized upon what she called the “fear and the anger and the resentment” from Trump and Republicans, dismissing Trump’s declaration that only he could fix the problems that afflict the nation.
“Donald Trump may think America’s in decline, but he’s wrong. America’s best days are still ahead of us, my friends,” Clinton said Saturday in Miami.
Sanders will address the convention Monday night, and Obama will speak on Wednesday night. Other high-profile speakers include first lady Michelle Obama, former president Bill Clinton and Vice-President Joe Biden.
But party disunity is certain to also be a factor in Philadelphia, given Wasserman Schultz’s departure and the general unhappiness among many Sanders supporters, intensified by both the emails and by Clinton’s pick of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia to be her running mate.
Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Sanders, said there is talk among Sanders’ delegates of walking out during Kaine’s acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Sanders’ supporters believe Kaine is not liberal enough.
Sanders endorsed Clinton two weeks ago after pressing for the party platform to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage, debt-free college and an expansion of access to health care.
Sanders supporters pushed for changes to the party nominating process at a meeting of the party rules committee Saturday. They did not succeed in an effort to pass an amendment abolishing superdelegates, but they did win a compromise deal with the Clinton camp — a “unity commission” that will review the overall procedures and will seek to limit the role of superdelegates in future elections.
Party wrangles aside, Clinton is within just days of her long-held ambition to become the party’s official presidential nominee.
After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates — those are the party officials who can back any candidate — it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. Sanders has 1,893.