Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign manager suggested Thursday that the Republican National Committee has been more successful than its Democratic counterpart at bringing the party together.
“If you look at the Republican side, the party chair there has been working day and night to try and you know, keep everybody together and to try unify the party,” Jeff Weaver told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, referring to RNC Chair Reince Priebus.
The Sanders team has not been shy about suggesting that DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) has favored his opponent, Hillary Clinton, throughout the primary race. Weaver has repeatedly called Schultz “unfair” and the Vermont senator himself said he would replace her as party chair if he won the nomination.
“I think unity in the party is much easier to achieve if we have consensus and a chair who was committed to playing the traditional role that the chairs of party plays,” Weaver told Mitchell. “You know even when there’s sharp elbows and a primary contest, the chair of the party is looking out for the broader interest of the party to make sure the party can come together in the end and we have seen repeatedly from Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz that’s really not the role she’s played.”
Weaver charged that Wasserman Schultz “escalated” tensions that broke out during Nevada’s state Democratic convention after Clinton earned a greater number of delegates than Sanders. Despite calls from Democratic leaders to quash any potential violence coming from his supporters, Sanders released a statement saying that was “nonsense” and criticizing state party leaders.
Schultz called Sanders’ response to the events in Nevada “anything but acceptable.”
Weaver declined to take any shots at Clinton during his MSNBC appearance, instead surfacing the possibility of a Fox News debate between Sanders and Trump as an opportunity to “expose” his Republican opponent’s agenda.
Sanders accepted Fox’s invitation to debate ahead of the California primary while Clinton declined. Trump then suggested during a Wednesday night appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that he’d be open to a one-on-one matchup against the Vermont senator, but later said he’d been joking.
Weaver said the Sanders team was engaged in “back-channel” conversations to set the debate up.
I don’t like DWS, but Weaver is using her as a scapegoat. This guy is a pathetic loser. Dems need to start fighting back against the Sanders campaign. Rolling over does nothing.
Maybe that’s because the Republican candidates wanted to unify their party, even with an asshole like Trump as the nominee, whereas you and Sanders and the Bros seem to actually want to blow up the Democratic party.
Sanders’ aide: “I did a better job fracturing the Democratic party than anyone on the GOP side.”
As I posted yesterday, I take Weaver’s comment as Sanders’s until and unless he unequivocally disavows this guy.
My response to this is also to Josh’s e-mail from reader DR:
Regardless of what you think of DWS’s tenure, now is NOT the time to get rid of her. Look, in a crisis, you deal with the hand you’ve been dealt not some completely alternative hand. Getting rid of her would create internal chaos in the Dem Party and it would send a big signal to the Berniacs that they were able to get a scalp. And for what? As so many here have already said, come Nov. '17, these sh*theads will be nowhere to be found and their Dear Leader will be telling them not to vote because after all, it’s rigged anyway.
EDIT TO ADD: @progressivedem Rolling over never got the Obama Admin. anything in regards to the Rethugs. Why would it be any different with these a holes?