RIEDER: DNC EMAILS SPELL TROUBLE,
Aggravating old wounds is not the way to satisfy Sanders supporters
PHILADELPHIA Looks like the Democrats didn’t want the Republicans to have all the fun. Last week, the GOP put on a dysfunctional convention of epic proportions. The home state governor, a Republican no less, boycotted the affair. The nominee’s wife was caught up in a plagiarism scandal. The nominee’s chief rival was booed off the stage after he refused to endorse the nominee.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats began their convention here Monday seething with turmoil.
Hillary Clinton’s smooth glide path toward her nomination was jarred by the release of emails that reinforced an idea widely suspected: that the Democratic National Committee had done whatever it could to ensure Clinton’s nomination.
So maybe you didn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think the system was rigged.
When it comes to email, the forces of Clinton seem to have the reverse Midas touch.
The emails, released by WikiLeaks and possibly unearthed by those wily Russian hackers, shone a bright spotlight on Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a longtime bête noire for Sen. Bernie Sanders and his loyal fans.
By Sunday night, Wasserman Schultz had announced she was stepping down.
But her resignation, effective at the end of the convention, hardly assuaged the anger of the Sandernistas. When Wasserman Schultz, rather than quietly fading away, foolishly addressed the Florida delegation Monday morning, she was roundly and repeatedly jeered.
This is not the way you like to open your convention, with the party chairman forced out and a faction of the party enraged.
And this is one of those kerfuffles that, rather than vanishing in 24 hours, could have legs. It poses a real danger for Clinton.
Let’s face it: Many of Sanders’ supporters just don’t like her very much. They see her as part of the entrenched system, politics as usual, a vivid symbol of what the Sanders campaign has fought so hard to overturn. (Goldman Sachs, anyone?) Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton helps, but it hardly eliminates the problem.
And from the start the Sanders forces have been convinced the DNC had its thumb on the scales. And not without reason. The original debate schedule — just six, banning candidates from par- ticipating in non-sanctioned debates, Saturday night time slots when no one watches — was totally geared to protect the front-runner.
But once their candidate had secured the nomination and Sanders at last endorsed her, Team Clinton was hopeful things would settle down. They anticipated a calm convention that would be the antithesis of the turbulent GOP gathering in Cleveland.
But many Sanders supporters continue to mistrust Clinton. And those embarrassing emails, with one staffer speculating on whether Sanders was an atheist and how that might be used against him, did nothing but aggravate old wounds. So did the selection of centrist Tim Kaine as Clinton’s running mate rather than a more progressive figure such as Elizabeth Warren. There’s talk of challenging the Kaine pick.
And make no mistake, Clinton will need those Sanders voters if she is to prevail in November; de- fections could be devastating. I wouldn’t be too confident in those predictions that a Clinton blowout of Donald Trump is in the offing. Yes, it’s very hard to imagine that a candidate with such repugnant views, one so far outside the respectable mainstream, could make it to the White House. And Trump certainly has run a poor campaign by conventional standards, one filled with self-inflicted wounds.
But this, as you may have noticed, is a very unusual political year, and underestimating Trump has not proved to be a smart strategy; witness his blitzkrieg through the Republican primaries. And Clinton, like Trump, is a polarizing figure with very high negatives.
The latest CNN/ORC poll hardly provides solace for the Clinton crowd. It shows Trump with a three-point lead in a headto-head contest with Clinton; an earlier poll had Clinton up by seven.
Now, a poll 31⁄ months out is 2 of dubious predictive value, and a post-convention bump is hardly unusual. But a bump after that convention? The point is that this has the feeling of a volatile race. A new CBS poll has the candidates tied, hardly suggesting a rout.
“We have got to elect Hillary Clinton,” Sanders told his supporters at the convention Monday afternoon.
Clinton had better hope that they take his words to heart. The boos when he mentioned her name weren’t reassuring.
This is not the way you like to open your convention, with the party chairman forced out and a faction of the party enraged. And this is one of those kerfuffles that could have legs.