SPECTACLE OF PARTY STRIFE
PHILADELPHIA — For a convention that was supposed to be a clinic on professionalism and party unity, the DNC is a spectacle of rowdy disharmony.
Just seconds into the Florida delegation’s breakfast, angry delegates mauled outgoing DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with shouts and taunts. She lectured sternly, “Everybody settle down please” — but that only made them angrier.
She tried invoking everything from the mass shooting in Florida to her own past health struggles, but nothing was enough to stamp out the shouts of “Shame on you!”
Things didn’t improve at the Wells Fargo Arena, even when Wasserman Schultz was replaced by an understudy.
It seemed perfectly fitting that Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor who presided over the riotous destruction in the streets of Baltimore last year, opened the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Rawlings-Blake declared the convention open but forgot to gavel in, and so she had to scamper unceremoniously back out to strike the mallet.
Moments later, for some reason or another, the person reciting the Pledge of Allegiance omitted the phrase “Under God.”
Even the news coverage was incongruous. On CNN, Jake Tapper briefly cut to fresh protests outside of the arena before more “Breaking News” occurred onstage.
“Breaking News: Boyz II Men Performs ‘ Motown Philly,’” read the screen.
Soon after, the Sanders supporters erupted — shouting down speakers and creating chaos.
The startled DNC released an apology to Sanders. But it was too late. The levee had broken.
The WikiLeaks email dump has done a lot to prove that the Democratic Party had been fixing the election for Hillary Clinton. Party staffers and pundits had no idea how to handle it.
The course of action they took was to suggest Vladimir Putin was hacking the DNC to hand the election to his pal, Donald Trump.
Guest after Democratic guest on Herald Radio was dutiful in their efforts to foist the 10,000-pound block of spin on listeners, but the will was not there to go beyond the vague talking points.
We should give them credit for creativity, though.
This convention has a problem of its own making, and moving Wasserman Schultz to an official Clinton campaign post is not going to fix it.
She and her team spent a year trying to snuff out Bernie Sanders and they finally did it, but the energy of the Vermont senator’s insurgency had to go somewhere. The multitudes have made it clear that they won’t settle down, and they won’t settle for Hillary.