Disunity rules as Democratic convention gets underway

PHILADELPHIA - The Democratic convention opened to chaotic scenes Monday, as rival supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders traded boos, jeers and taunts in a very public show of party disunity.

As shock polls showed Republican Donald Trump leading the race for the White House, Democrats gathering in Philadelphia to make Clinton the first woman presidential nominee from a major party were in disarray.

Diehard supporters of Sanders booed when a pastor leading the invocation prayer mentioned Clinton's name, setting the stage for each successive mention to spark a raucous chorus of outbursts.

Twice on Monday, Sanders appealed to supporters to help build party unity, ahead of a pivotal primetime address to delegates.

"We have got to defeat Donald Trump. We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and (running mate) Tim Kaine," Sanders told a gathering of his supporters.

"Trump is a bully and a demagogue," he said. His call to support Clinton was nevertheless met with loud jeers.

He later sent a text message to supporters asking them not to protest on the floor of the convention as a "personal courtesy" to him.

But that appeared to have minimal impact.

The party is reeling from leaked Democratic National Committee emails which show nominally neutral party staff trying to undermine Sanders' insurgent campaign and questioning his Jewish faith.

WikiLeaks at the weekend released nearly 20,000 emails from between January 2015 and May 2016, gleaned by hackers who apparently raided the accounts of seven DNC leaders.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating the "cyber intrusion," which the Clinton campaign blamed on Russian hackers bent on helping Trump.

Sanders, a leftist who promised a "political revolution," lost to Clinton in the primary handily.

But the scandal has angered his already embittered supporters, who believe the deck was stacked against them.

It has led to the ouster of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an apology from party leaders.

"We want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email," the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.

TRUMP VS A HAM SANDWICH

As the boos and chants of "Bernie! Bernie!" continued inside the convention hall throughout the evening, Sanders protesters outside tried to breach security barriers, leading to a handful of people being detained.

"Clinton can't beat Trump. Period," said Michigan delegate Melissa Arab, a Sanders supporter.

"A ham sandwich could beat Trump and she's not going to beat him. If she's nominated, people are going to end up with somebody bad for president."

This was meant to be a celebration for Clinton, who was the primary runner-up in 2008 to Barack Obama.

Later this week, she will make history when she formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination -- the first woman to lead a major party's White House ticket.

But disunity overshadowed the convention's anti-Trump message and its courting of Latino voters.

Clinton's running mate Kaine, a senator from Virginia, said in an interview broadcast Monday that their administration would press for immigration reform in their first 100 days in office.

PRIME TIME

Clinton will hope that two other prime-time addresses can help foster unity later Monday -- from firebrand Senator Elizabeth Warren and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Warren was to tell the convention that Trump wants an "America of fear and hate," according to prepared remarks.

"When we turn on each other, we can't unite to fight back against a rigged system," she was to say.

Some Democratic delegates agreed it was time to come together.

New polls showed Trump surging since his confirmation last week as the Republican presidential nominee, with a CNN poll putting him three percentage points ahead of Clinton -- a six-point post-convention bump.

"The stakes are too high. In the end it's going to be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump and it's not even a close call," said Paul Czisny, a 57-year-old delegate from Wisconsin who had supported Sanders.

The party is seeking to project a more unified message than the Republicans did at their convention last week in Cleveland, where fissures over Trump's candidacy were laid bare.

"The Democrats are in a total meltdown," Trump taunted on Twitter. "E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!"

He later told supporters Clinton "worked very, very hard to rig the system. Little did she know that China, Russia, one of our many, many friends came in and hacked the hell out of us."

Trump has long sought to scoop up disaffected voters who feel Sanders -- a self-described democratic socialist -- was denied a fair shot at the nomination.

Former president Bill Clinton is the star speaker at the convention Tuesday, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden take the stage Wednesday.

Clinton got a modest boost Monday when former vice president Al Gore offered his endorsement.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Democrats in disarray on eve of convention to nominate Clinton

PHILADELPHIA - The head of the Democratic Party resigned on Sunday amid a furor over embarrassing leaked emails, hoping to head off a growing rebellion by Bernie Sanders supporters on the eve of the convention to nominate Hillary Clinton for the White House.

Lingering bitterness from the heated primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders erupted after more than 19,000 Democratic National Committee emails, leaked on Friday, confirmed Sanders' frequent charge that the party played favorites in the race.

In a statement, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the best way for the party to accomplish its goal of putting Clinton in the White House was for her to step aside after the convention. Sanders had demanded earlier in the day that Wasserman Schultz resign.

The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention in Cleveland last week.

It also overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton's coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. She will be the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.

The four-day Democratic convention will open on Monday. In some good news for Clinton, The New York Times reported that businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse her in a prime-time speech on Monday, saying she will be the best choice for moderate voters in 2016.

The cache of emails leaked on Friday by the WikiLeaks website disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist.

Sanders said Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative from Florida, had made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party. "The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race," he said.

'RUSSIAN CONNECTION?'

The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party's emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"What's disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump," Clinton campaign chairman Robby Mook said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said the Clinton camp was trying to distract from its party discord ahead of the convention.

"What's in those emails show that it was a clearly rigged system, that Bernie Sanders ... never had a chance," Manafort said on ABC.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, and Sanders, 74, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont who ran for president as a Democrat, waged a bruising months-long battle for the nomination. Branding himself a democratic socialist, Sanders galvanized young and liberal voters with his calls to rein in Wall Street and eradicate income inequality.

But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention.

"I'm not shocked but I'm disappointed," Sanders said of the emails earlier on Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The emails showed DNC officials pondering various ways to undercut Sanders. Brad Marshall, the DNC's chief financial officer, apologized on Facebook on Saturday for an email in which he discussed how some voters in upcoming nominating contests in Kentucky and West Virginia would reject an atheist.

"He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage," Marshall wrote in a May 5 email to three top DNC officials. No names were mentioned, but Sanders was the only Jewish candidate.

"I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."

Clinton told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired on Sunday that she had not read any of the emails but it was "wrong and unacceptable" to bring religion into the political process.

SANDERS SUPPORTERS ANGRY

The emails angered many Sanders supporters who were already dismayed by Clinton's choice on Friday of low-key U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her vice presidential running mate. Kaine, 58, who could appeal to independents and moderates, has never been aligned with party liberals.

Sanders, who has endorsed Clinton and will speak on her behalf to the convention on Monday, said he would have preferred she pick U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of the party's liberal wing, as her No. 2.

"I have known Tim Kaine for a number of years. ... Tim is a very, very smart guy. He is a very nice guy," Sanders said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"He is more conservative than I am. Would I have preferred to see somebody like an Elizabeth Warren selected by Secretary Clinton? Yes, I would have," he said.

Carrying pitchforks meant to portray Clinton as the devil, hundreds of Sanders supporters took to the streets of Philadelphia earlier on Sunday to say they felt betrayed by the DNC.

"It just validated everything we thought, everything we believed to be true, that this was completely rigged right from the beginning, and that you know it was really about what they were doing everything to set it up so she would win," Sanders supporter Gwen Sperling said.

DNC Vice Chairwoman Donna Brazile will serve as interim chair through the election, the DNC said on Twitter.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com