Shifting Gears From Cleveland To Philadelphia: Let The Drama Begin

It seems like just yesterday that I was leaving Thursday night from the Quicken Loans Arena, walking down East 4th, trying to catch an Uber on Euclid, and knowing that the dramatics of the 2016 RNC were over. The many RNC antics had my Twitter feed blowing up all week and, honestly, I am still trying to make sense of everything that happened. While reports are still being done on the overall success of the RNC last week, my Twitter feed is yet again busy with the start of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Last week, the RNC opened up with chaos on the floor and plagiarism accusations, while the DNC has opened up with a huge email scandal. Are the Republicans and Democrats hosting a contest to see who can better mess up the beginning of their respective conventions? 

Both the RNC and DNC have an important role of showcasing party unity and their nominee to the American public. The name of the game here is media attention, and which party can be more newsworthy, thus hopefully attracting more voters. Two days before the RNC kicked off, Trump had the media running all over the place in an effort to confirm Mike Pence as his running mate. Clinton, trying to steal momentum from the RNC, brought the media's attention back to her by announcing Tim Kaine as her running mate three days ago. Since the primaries began, the media has had an influential role on voters' decisions and both Trump and Clinton clearly understand that.

The RNC did a fantastic job of showcasing several instances of party disunity, so the DNC should be focused on presenting a unified front. Unfortunately, as The Washington Post reports, that the "Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned...due to the release of thousands of embarrassing emails among party officials that appeared to show coordinated efforts to help Clinton at the expense of her rivals in the Democratic primaries." Read that article here. Whether or not these emails actually helped Clinton beat Sanders is still unclear, but Schultz made the only decision she could. Being a chair, it is highly unprofessional to lobby for one candidate over the other and the emails clearly prove a bias. To just give a snapshot of the emails sent, The Washington Post also writes that "the emails revealed a DNC official apparently discussing how to use Sanders's religion against him to help Clinton ahead of the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries."

Photo by Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons license)

So if these were private emails, then how exactly were they released to the public? These emails were hacked and released on WikiLeaks, but as The Washington Post reports "the Clinton campaign-and several cybersecurity experts-said the leak was a political ploy carried out by the Russian government to aid in the election of Donald Trump." Rather than throw out accusations at how the hack was organized, the Clinton campaign needs to do their best to recover from another scandal.

Upon hearing the news of the scandal, Donald Trump immediately had a field day by attacking Clinton yet again. On Twitter, Trump tweeted "The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing! E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!" This email scandal helped push Trump's portrayal of Clinton as 'Crooked Hillary' and will only add to a sense of distrust among voters.

So readers, just when you thought the political antics were over, the 2016 DNC has kicked off yet another round of drama. I think it is safe to say that we will be in for a long week and an even longer campaign season.