OVERBOARD!
DNC boss tossed amid leak scandal
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine might just have a sinking feeling, as chaos struck on the eve of the Democratic convention with party boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz forced out amid leaks showing her committee worked against Bernie Sanders.
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 walkout over Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential pick.
On the eve of the four-day convention to nominate the country’s first major-party female presidential nominee, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in disgrace over hacked 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 of 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).
But in a statement announcing she was stepping down as DNC chair effective “at the end of this convention,” Wasserman Schultz insisted she would still open and close the event.
Wasserman Schultz also said she planned to “address our delegates about the stakes involved in this election not only for Democrats, but for all Americans.”
That claim raised the prospect of her getting booed off the stage — like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was last week when he refused to endorse Republican candidate Donald Trump at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
“There’s no way a speech by Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be well-received by Bernie Sanders delegates,” Solomon, national coordinator of the Bernie Delegates Network, told The Post.
“She should have resigned many months ago. Now the question looms over us here in Philadelphia: Why not immediately? Why wait till the end of the week?”
University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said that “unless the Clinton campaign has an agreement with the Sanders bunch to let her leave gracefully, it could be a mistake” to let Wasserman Schultz take the podium.
“Of course she’ll be booed, absent an agreement,” Sabato said.
A party insider and Clinton backer with knowledge of the talks that led to the ouster said party officials were working furiously to keep her from making a speech.
“Debbie wouldn’t go,” the source said. “She wouldn’t do it gracefully. She didn’t do it nicely.”
On Twitter, Trump gloated over the disarray, writing: “I always said that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was overrated. The Dems Convention is cracking up and Bernie is exhausted, no energy left!”
He also praised Wasserman Schultz’s GOP counterpart, tweeting: “Today proves what I have always known, that @Reince Priebus is the tough one and the smart one, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz.”
Meanwhile, Democratic sources told CNN that the hacked e-mails 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 e-mail scandal in a bid to help elect Trump, who has predicted he’d “get along very well” with Russian President Vladimir P utin.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook noted that WikiLeaks released the nearly 20,000 e-mails right after “changes to the Republican platform to make it more proRussian.”
“I don’t think it’s coincidental that these e-mails were released on the eve of our convention here, and I think that’s disturb- ing,” Mook told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Sanders called the e-mails “outrageous, but not a great shock,” telling CNN that he had long accused the DNC of trying to undermine him in favor of Clinton.
In a statement, he later said Wasserman Schultz “made the right decision” to quit, adding: “While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people.”