The theme for today’s Democratic National Convention, United Together, seems a little ironic just hours into the first day of the convention. The Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned after WikiLeaks released a tranche of emails, which showed that DNC Leaders were working to sabotage Bernie Sanders' campaign. Outraged, Sanders supporters are protesting Hillary Clinton outside of the convention, shouting “Lock her up.”
To see how this is playing out among Sanders delegates we checked in with Philip Johnston. He served twice as the Chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, he’s a Sanders delegate and he’s serving on the rules committee at this year's DNC. “I think anybody who supported Bernie Sanders has a right to feel betrayed by our own party.” Johnston said. “As upset as we all are, there's no remedy.”
Johnston urges voters not to allow this to overshadow the point of the convention, and speaks to the potential harm this leak could do to the Clinton campaign. Despite originally supporting Bernie Sanders, and wishing that Elizabeth Warren had been the pick for Vice President (“I’d prefer Elizabeth to be pope if we could make her pope,” he said), he’s rallying behind Clinton and Kaine and urging others to do the same. “We need to be as unified as we can and make sure Donald Trump doesn’t go anywhere near the White House.” Johnston said.
When asked if anything like this happened when he ran primary elections Johnston said “not only was I totally neutral, I told my staff that if anybody so much as hinted that they were biased in anyway they’d be fired. That's the position that every party chair understands they have to take, but apparently Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t get that message.”
Phillip Johnston is the founder of the communications and public affairs consulting firm, Johnston Associates.
