The Democratic National Committee abruptly changed their schedule Wednesday night in an effort to head off supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who still wanted to voice their opposition to Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential nominee.
Originally, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) was slated to officially nominate U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as the party’s vice presidential nominee, and to ask for a nomination by voice vote. Instead, convention chair U.S. Rep. Marsha Fudge (D-Ohio) quickly made the motions and the house music was turned up to drown out the voices of delegates who were demanding a roll call vote.
Sanders supporters likely would’ve used the roll call vote to voice their displeasure with Clinton and the DNC in the wake of the WikiLeaks release of emails proving collusion between the party and the nominee’s campaign to oust their preferred candidate. The move clearly signals the party’s wounds are far from healed.
It could also be a prelude to even more chaos to come Thursday night when Clinton is set to formally accept the party’s presidential nomination.
Scott was originally slated to speak for about three minutes about his fellow Virginian. After Kaine’s formal nomination, Scott was allowed about 90 seconds to offer some remarks about his friend.
