Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Tom Perez has made initial appointments to this year’s Democratic Party’s nominating convention in Milwaukee, and Bernie Sanders ‘ allies are not pleased.
The Hill reports that both DNC members and Sanders supporters are particularly livid with two appointments on the rules committee: former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, appointed as co-chair, and Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman John Podesta, who was given a seat on the committee.
Frank was accused of being an enemy to the Sanders campaign in 2016, and Podesta’s hacked emails from the same year revealed him asking a Democratic strategist where to “stick the knife in” the Vermont senator. The purported bias against Sanders from the DNC was enough to make Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard step down from her position on the governing body to vote for him over Clinton.
Sanders’ allies also noted that only a small number from their group was appointed to the rules committee. Yasmine Taeb, a DNC member from Virginia who has not endorsed a candidate in 2020 but was a 2016 delegate for Sanders, suggested that some appointments are actually enemies of Sanders.
“The appointments also include individuals that are outright hostile to Bernie Sanders and his supporters. It’s not the message the DNC should be sending to the grassroots right now when we’re all working aggressively to defeat the racist in the White House.”
During an interview with progressive online news channel Status Coup, Sanders’ national co-chair Nina Turner didn’t hold back when speaking of the appointments, calling them a “slap in the face.”
“If the DNC believes it’s going to get away in 2020 with what it did in 2016, it has another thing coming,” she said.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign co-chair, Nina Turner, slams DNC chairman Tom Perez’s nomination list for the 2020 convention standing committee: “The DNC should be ashamed of itself because it really is a slap in the face to folks who were asking for reform.” pic.twitter.com/AIvTKWr7mC
— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) January 27, 2020
Per Breitbart , Frank previously claimed Sanders supporters were low-information voters.
“You have people, I believe, who do not understand how hard it is to make change. [It is] the importance of not just being idealistic, but being sensibly pragmatic and keeping their ideals,” he said, adding the Sanders is scooping up the support of such voters.
Despite pushback from establishment Democrats, including f ormer President Barack Obama’s allies , Sanders’ prospects for securing the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination continue to increase ahead of the Iowa caucuses on February 3. As The Inquisitr reported, Sanders is leading the Iowa Democratic Caucus in the latest 7News/Emerson College Poll with 30 percent support. In second place is former Vice President Joe Biden with 21 percent support, and in third is Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar with 13 percent.
