Michael Mathes - US Democrats scrambled Sunday to contain damaging revelations of an insider effort to hobble Bernie Sanders’s White House campaign that threatened an uneasy truce on the eve of the party’s convention.

Democrats converge Monday on Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love”, to elevate Hillary Clinton as the party’s nominee who will battle Republican Donald Trump in 2016’s presidential election. After a hard-fought primary campaign, the party had been heading to the Democratic National Convention far more unified than the Republicans, whose fissures were laid bare this week as they confirmed brash billionaire Trump as their flag-bearer.

“In Philadelphia we will offer a very different vision for our country,” Clinton pledged. “One that is about building bridges, not walls, embracing the diversity that makes our country great.” Her quest received a boost Saturday when she introduced Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, a savvy Spanish-speaking US senator with a bright smile but “a backbone of steel”, according to Clinton. But even as the party basked in the lovefest that was the first Clinton-Kaine rally, there was a whiff of scandal that could badly rattle party unity.

A cache of leaked emails from Democratic Party leaders’ accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to hobble the upstart Sanders campaign that had competed with Clinton - including by seeking to present him as an atheist to undermine him in highly religious states. The Vermont senator Sunday repeated calls for the resignation of the Democratic National Committee’s chairwoman, whose leadership was already under fire and whose impartiality was called into question by the leaks.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz should not be chair of the DNC,” Sanders told ABC’s “This Week.” “And I think these emails reiterate that reason why she should not be chair.”

CNN reported Sunday that party officials had decided Wasserman Schultz would not speak at or preside over the party’s four-day convention in a last-ditch bid to appease a furious Sanders camp. “She’s been quarantined,” it quoted a top Democrat said of Wasserman Schultz.

‘Outrageous’

Sanders, along with First Lady Michelle Obama, is one of the headliners on day one of the Democratic convention which “gavels in” at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) Monday in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center. Former president Bill Clinton is the star on Tuesday, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden take the stage Wednesday.

While Sanders has publicly endorsed his former rival, many of his most fervent supporters are organizing protests in Philadelphia, with the largest expected on the convention’s opening day.

Several thousand protesters converged on the streets of Philadelphia near City Hall on Sunday, many of them Sanders supporters and people supporting renewable energy and anti-fracking efforts

Many in the Sanders camp have voiced disappointment with Clinton’s choice of a center-left running mate, and the email revelations were only set to fuel the resentment.

Clinton is “disingenuous, not real,” Laurie Cestnick, coordinator for the Occupy DNC Convention protest group, told AFP. “We’ve come to see that she’s part of a corrupt system.”

One of the incriminating emails appeared to show a top party official conspiring to present Sanders - who is Jewish - as an atheist in order to undermine him in particularly religious states.

“I think it’s outrageous, but it is not a great shock to me,” Sanders told CNN on Sunday. “I mean, there’s no question to my mind and I think no question to any objective observer’s mind that the DNC was supporting Hillary Clinton,” he said.

Trump pounced on the leaks as he tries to scoop up disaffected voters who feel Sanders - a self-described democratic socialist initially dismissed as a fringe candidate - was denied a fair shot at the nomination. “Looks like the Bernie people will fight. If not, their BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS was a total waste of time. Kaine stands for opposite!” Trump tweeted.

‘Corrupt system’

Sanders delegates were further frustrated when their efforts to end the party’s use of superdelegates - grandees who are free to vote for whomever they choose at the convention - mostly failed during a series of rules committee votes, according to The Washington Post. But Sanders delegates won a compromise victory when the committee agreed to look at reducing the number of superdelegates in the nomination process, something Sanders has long demanded. There was a decidedly anti-Hillary sentiment among the activists flocking Sunday into Philadelphia, where police were intensifying security operations.– AFP

EX-NY mayor to endorse Hillary

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

NEW YORK

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will endorse Hillary Clinton during his speech at the Democratic National Convention, a Bloomberg advisor told the New York Times Sunday, amid stepping of political activities across the United States.

Bloomberg, who bypassed his own run for the presidency this election cycle, will endorse Hillary Clinton in a prime-time address at the convention on Monday and make the case for Mrs. Clinton as the best choice for moderate voters in 2016, the adviser said, as political sc.

The news is an unexpected move from Bloomberg, who has not been a member of the Democratic Party since 2000; was elected the mayor of New York City as a Republican; and later became an independent. But it reflects Mr. Bloomberg’s increasing dismay about the rise of Donald Trump and a determination to see that the Republican nominee is defeated.

Mrs. Clinton is seeking to reach out to middle-of-the-road swing voters and even moderate Republicans uneasy about Trump, the Times said. Polls show that significant numbers of Republicans remain wary of Trump, and question his fitness for the presidency.

Bloomberg will vouch for Mrs. Clinton “from the perspective of a business leader and an independent,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, who has been sharply critical of Mr. Trump’s views on immigration and the economy, may fortify Mrs. Clinton’s appeal to the political center.And with the Republican nominee basing his campaign on his background as a businessman, Bloomberg, a billionaire media executive and philanthropist, may help counter the Trump sales pitch.

It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a speaker who is not a member of a political party to address that party’s convention. Bloomberg is expected to speak on Wednesday, the same evening as President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden.

Meanwhile, US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been invited to join the Green Party, after being forced to end his bid in favour of Hillary Clinton.

“If Sanders repudiates the Democratic Party that betrayed him, I’d welcome him into Green Party to continue the revolution,” Jill Stein, the party’s presidential candidate said in a tweet on Saturday.

Stein made the comments only a day after the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks uncovered a secret plot by top leaders at the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) to undermine Sanders’ bid to win the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

More than 19,000 emails leaked by the website supports claims by the Sanders campaign that the DNC and its Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz sided with Clinton, who was also favored by President Barack Obama.

The emails showed how some DNC officials tried to deal with the Vermont senator’s popularity, which posed a direct challenge to the former first lady.

An email from May 21 shows DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach and communications director Luis Miranda talking about misleading the media into thinking that the Sanders’ “campaign was a mess.”In another case, DNC CFO Brad Marshall appeared to be questioning Sanders’ faith, a factor that he said would affect primary voters in Kentucky and West Virginia at the time.

The leak “shows revolution can’t survive in a counter-revolutionary party,” Stein said while promoting herself as the right person to run the country.“Don’t let establishment bully you into supporting corporate warmongers,” Stein added in another tweet.

This is not the first time the Green Party candidate has made such proposals to the Vermont senator. Stein invited Sanders to join her party and continue her presidential bid earlier this month, before Sanders’ endorsement of his arch-rival.

“I’ve invited Bernie to sit down explore collaboration — everything is on the table,” Stein told the British daily Guardian. “If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement.”

Throughout the primary campaign, Sanders said times and again that he will remain in the race until the party convention which will begin on July 25.However, he endorsed Clinton after facing mounting pressure from major Democratic figures, including Obama himself.

On July 12, 2016, Sanders formally endorsed his opponent after facing mounting pressure from major Democratic figures, but has yet to suspend his own presidential campaign.