Bernie Sanders On DNC Chair: ‘I Think She Should Resign, Period’

Bernie Sanders, in an interview on ABC’s This Week, called on DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down, citing the recent Wikileaks dump of emails showing that, from the beginning, the ostensibly neutral Democratic National Committee was stacking the deck against his campaign.

“I think she should resign, period, and I think we need a new chair that’s going to lead us in a new direction,” Sanders said. “I think I told you a long time ago that the DNC was not running a fair operation — that they were supporting Secretary Clinton. So what I suggested to be true 6 months ago turns out in fact to be true.”

JUST IN: Sanders calls on Wasserman Schultz to resign following email leaks https://t.co/sBlelCehga pic.twitter.com/MYpgUd0VH9

— The Hill (@thehill) July 24, 2016

Sanders concluded by saying that he is “not shocked” by the revelations. Rather, he said, “I’m disappointed.”

Throughout his run for the presidency, Sanders supporters, along with Sanders himself, alleged that the DNC treated his campaign unfairly, from the controversial data incident to the limited debate schedule. Recent emails released by Wikileaks seem to confirm this notion.

Among the nearly 20,000 leaked emails, one can see clearly a sense of antagonism — or, at the very least, annoyance — toward the Sanders campaign coming from DNC officials. Revealed, among other things, was a plan by one official to construct an anti-Sanders narrative that characterized his campaign as “a mess.”

Another DNC staffer proposed attacking Sanders on the basis of his religious beliefs, or lack thereof.

“I think I read he is an atheist,” the staffer wrote. “This could make several points difference with my peeps.”

Though Sanders has noted that these revelations are not altogether startling, his campaign has called for accountability.

RELEASE: 19,252 emails from the US Democratic National Committee https://t.co/kpFxYDoNyX #Hillary2016 #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/nklNO5WSQL

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 23, 2016

“Someone does have to be held accountable,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in an interview with ABC. “We spent 48 hours of public attention worrying about who in the [Donald] Trump campaign was going to be held responsible for the fact that some lines of Mrs. Obama’s speech were taken by Mrs. Trump. Someone in the DNC needs to be held at least as accountable as the Trump campaign.”

Weaver reiterated the Sanders camp’s previous claims that the DNC was biased against Sanders from the beginning, noting, as Sanders did, his disappointment.

“We have an electoral process. The DNC, by its charter, is required to be neutral among the candidates. Clearly it was not. We had obviously pointed that out in a number of instances prior to this, and these emails just bear that out.”

For many Sanders supporters, this calls into question Sanders’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, an endorsement that many feel directly contradicts the Vermont senator’s vehement anti-establishment message. In the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention, these questions are likely to become increasingly intense, posing problems for Democrats eager for unity.

Sanders officials feel that one step toward unity is for Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down from her position as DNC chair.

“We are trying to build unity for the fall to beat Donald Trump, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a figure of disunity in the party, not a figure of unity,” Jeff Weaver said.

As CNN has reported, Schultz has, as a result of the leaks, been removed from any potential speaking slot at the upcoming convention.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose stewardship of the DNC has been under fire through most of the presidential primary process, will not have a major speaking role in an effort ‘to keep the peace’ in the party, a Democrat familiar with the decision said. The revelation comes following the release of nearly 20,000 emails.”

But the systemic bias that has infected the DNC throughout the primary process cannot be addressed by symbolic gestures toward those disaffected by the Democratic establishment’s almost unanimous opposition to Bernie Sanders. Systemic flaws can only, as Sanders has argued throughout his campaign, be addressed by fundamental, systemic changes.

[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]