Unconventional #44: DNC Day 2 — The ‘You’re Being Ridiculous’ Edition

Coming to you live every morning from Philadelphia, Unconventional is the one thing you need to read to understand what’s really happening at the Democratic National Convention. Each edition will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the biggest (and weirdest) moments of the day, with original dispatches from the entire Yahoo Politics team — plus a sneak peek at what’s next.

An uneasy détente after drama on DNC’s opening day. Will it last?

PHILADELPHIA — In back-to-back speeches Monday, America’s two most popular progressives — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — tried to unite the Democratic Party around the presumptive nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after a rancorous, decorum-shattering session that saw delegates loyal to Sanders booing or chanting “Bernie! Bernie!” nearly every time Clinton’s name was mentioned.

By evening’s end, Warren and Sanders seemed to have succeeded, at least for the moment, in their mission. (Michelle Obama’s rapturously received address — a mother-in-chief’s case for Clinton — didn’t hurt, either.) The Bernie or Bust holdouts were no longer the loudest voices in the Wells Fargo Center. “Hillary Clinton” was now an applause line. The boos were reserved for Donald Trump.

The question now is whether the delicate détente negotiated Monday night will hold for the rest of the week — or whether the divisions on display throughout the day will erupt yet again, disrupting the message of party unity that the Clinton campaign was hoping to convey in the City of Brotherly Love.

Warren was first. She framed the election as a choice between “a man who inherited a fortune from his father” — a man “who only cares for himself, all day, every day” — and “one of the smartest, toughest, most tenacious people on this planet.”

“I’m with Hillary,” Warren said.

A few disillusioned delegates shouted, “We trusted you!” But the rest of the arena roared.

Then came the headliner. As Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison introduced the senator from Vermont, runners on the convention floor passed out signs emblazoned with Sanders’ familiar slogan: “Bernie — A Future to Believe In.” But Sanders’ royal-blue background and Jubilat font was gone, and Clinton’s light-blue background and Unity font had taken their place.

When Sanders finally strode onstage, the crowd cheered for two and a half minutes — an eternity in politics. Delegates were weeping. It felt like some sort of catharsis.

“Let me be as clear as I can be,” Sanders began. “This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip. It’s not about polls. It’s not about campaign strategy. It’s not about fundraising. It’s not about all the things the media spends so much time discussing. This election is about — and must be about — the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and grandchildren.”

And while Sanders admitted that “no one is more disappointed than I am” by “the final results of the nominating process” — and while he refused to release his delegates, guaranteeing that Clinton will face a more robust vote of opposition during Tuesday’s roll call than any Democratic nominee since the 1980s — he spent the remainder of his speech testifying that Clinton was better than Trump on issue after issue: minimum wage, Citizens United, college affordability, climate change, health care, prescription-drug prices, immigration reform, criminal-justice reform, human rights.

“By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that — based on her ideas and her leadership — Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States,” Sanders concluded, urging his supporters not to “sit [this election] out.” “The choice is not even close.”

He added that Clinton would “make an outstanding president.” If anyone was still heckling, they were inaudible amid the cheers.

Emotions ran high from the moment delegates arrived at the Wells Fargo Center. On Friday, Wikileaks published 20,000 hacked DNC emails showing that establishment officials worked to undermine Sanders’ primary campaign; by Monday afternoon, party Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was supposed to chair the convention as well, had been forced to give up her gavel and her job. For Sanders and his supporters, the revelations — and Wasserman Schultz’s slow-motion resignation — seemed to confirm what they had suspected all along: The system had been rigged against them. They were emboldened to push back.

And that’s exactly what they did.

The response to the opening invocation by Reverend Dr. Cynthia Hale of Decatur, Ga., set the tone for the rest of the day. The start of Hale’s prayer didn’t mention politics. But then she uttered the name “Hillary Clinton.”

“We have an opportunity, O God,” Hale intoned, “to give undeniable evidence to our commitment to justice and equality by nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton as our candidate for the highest office in the land.”

A few catcalls echoed off the rafters. As Hale continued to speak, a rumble built in the arena. Soon, the booing overwhelmed her words. It was a stunning breach of convention etiquette.

The same thing happened again and again throughout the afternoon.

Former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a Clinton loyalist, was jeered when he stepped to the podium to deliver the Rules Committee report.

As Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings lyrically extolled “the most progressive platform in party history,” Sanders fans opposed to Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal drowned him out.

“No TPP!” they yelled for minutes on end.

Ohio Rep. Martha Fudge — Wasserman Schultz’s replacement as the permanent chair of the convention — had the temerity to admit that she was “excited to put Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine in the White House.” Her confession — a fairly normal thing for a convention speaker to say about the party’s presumptive nominee — was greeted with a good 20 seconds of “Bernie! Bernie!”

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” Fudge shouted, as delegates from New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia kept booing and waving signs: “No,” “Nay,” “Feel the Bern.” Several Sanders supporters had crossed out Clinton’s “Love Trumps Hate” slogan and scrawled “Bernie Trumps Hillary” in its place.

“I intend to be fair, and I want to hear the varying opinions here,” Fudge continued. “I will be respectful of you. I want you to be respectful of me. We’re all Democrats, and we need to act like it.”

Fudge wasn’t the only Democrat who tried — and failed — to calm the crowd.

“Let’s show Donald Trump that we can work together,” said former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. “Let’s cheer for Bernie tonight when he takes the stage. Let’s also cheer for Hillary, when she takes the stage on Thursday.”

Then Webb mentioned the prospect of a “Madam President.” Some Sanders folks resumed their booing; other pro-Bernie delegations protested in silence, pointedly refusing to applaud.

Sanders waded into the melee before arriving at the arena. When he told his delegates to support the Democratic ticket during a speech at the Philadelphia Convention Center, they booed him as well.

“We have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine,” Sanders said.

“We want Bernie!” the crowd chanted. “We want Bernie!”

“Brothers and sisters! Brothers and sisters!” Sanders interrupted. “This is the real world that we live in.”

As Yahoo News Senior National Affairs Liz Goodwin reported, the senator went on to plead with the leaders of his delegates — via text message — not to protest on the convention floor.

“I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in any kind of protest on the floor,” he wrote. “It’s of utmost importance you explain this to your delegations.”

Later, Sanders emailed his delegates to say that the movement’s credibility would be “damaged” by “booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays.”

The outbursts briefly subsided around dinnertime. Many Sanders delegates left their seats to find food; they had missed lunch to see the senator speak at the convention center. The program also shifted onto less provocative turf, at least for Democrats: unions, immigration, LGBT rights, Donald Trump.

Yet the dissenters eventually came roaring back. Appearing alongside Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, comedian Sarah Silverman, a longtime Sanders supporter, praised Bernie for “mak[ing] us understand what is possible.” But she also insisted that “a vital part of that movement is making absolutely sure that Hillary Clinton is our next president of the United States” — and the chanting started up again, with each side trying to overpower the other.

“Bernie! Bernie!”

“Hillary! Hillary!”

“Can I just say to the ‘Bernie-or-Bust’ people: You’re being ridiculous,” Silverman snapped, going off-script. “Sorry, I just had to add that.”
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Missed the speeches? We’ve got you covered.

Lisa Belkin on Michelle Obama: “In an emotional, soaring and pointedly political speech on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia tonight, first lady Michelle Obama braided together her case for her husband’s legacy, her support for the woman who is trying to succeed him, and her repudiation of the man who is trying to defeat her.”

Hunter Walker on Bernie Sanders: “The man himself tried to soothe the ‘Bern’ at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered a rousing speech in which he implored the rebellious band of political revolutionaries who backed his presidential campaign to line up behind his former primary rival, Hillary Clinton.”

Liz Goodwin on Elizabeth Warren: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Democratic delegates Monday night that the system is ‘rigged’ against people who aren’t wealthy and that Donald Trump would make that worse if he is elected president. ‘His whole life has been about taking advantage of that rigged system,’ Warren said.”

Jon Ward on Cory Booker: “He quoted the poet Maya Angelou, in a crowd-pleasing rebuttal to Trump: ‘When Trump spews insults and demeaning words about our fellow Americans, I think of the poem by Maya Angelou. You know how it begins: ‘You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies, / You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise.’”

Garance Franke-Ruta on Sarah Silverman: “With that impeccable Berniecrat pedigree, and her longstanding willingness to break every conversational taboo, Silverman was uniquely positioned on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention to address fractious Sanders supporters in the audience.”

Jerry Adler on Al Franken: “Speaking on the first night of the convention, shortly before helping comedian Sarah Silverman introduce singer Paul Simon, Franken said he had a doctorate in ‘megalomania studies’ from the Republican nominee’s namesake unaccredited business school.”

Daniel Klaidman on Joseph P. Kennedy III: “These are hard Kennedy acts to follow. But Monday evening Joseph P. Kennedy III, the grandson of RFK, grand-nephew of Jack Kennedy and son of the former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, took the stage at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to see if he could work, just a little bit, the old family magic.”

Olivier Knox on Keith Ellison: “The first Muslim elected to Congress warned Democrats on Monday that staying home in November would amount to a ‘surrender’ to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his discriminatory agenda.”

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Overheard

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Is Russia really trying to help Trump? Everything you need to know about the DNC email hack.

PHILADELPHIA — Just weeks after she started preparing opposition research files on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort last spring, Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa got an alarming message when she logged into her personal Yahoo email account, reports Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff.

“Important action required,” read a pop-up box from a Yahoo security team that is informally known as “the Paranoids.” “We strongly suspect that your account has been the target of state-sponsored actors.”

Chalupa — who had been digging up information about Manafort’s connections to pro-Russian political leaders in Ukraine — quickly alerted top DNC officials.

“I was freaked out,” she told Isikoff.

Isikoff’s scoop is one of the latest revelations in a fast-moving, hard-to-follow — and potentially freaky — story about a possible Kremlin conspiracy that is upending the Democratic National Convention here in Philadelphia and threatening to unsettle the entire U.S. presidential election.

A quick primer on what we know, what we think we know, and what we’re still trying to find out.

What we know: The Democratic National Committee’s computer network was hacked earlier this year. Twenty-thousand stolen emails — many of them showing that DNC officials secretly favored Hillary Clinton during the primary, despite claiming to be impartial — were eventually published online. The revelations inflamed tensions between Bernie Sanders supporters and the Democratic establishment on the eve of the convention. After predicting that Philly would be drama-free — and big on unity — Democrats were thrown into disarray at the worst possible moment. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to give up her convention duties, and her job, as a result.

What we think we know: All signs point to a Russian cyberattack. In April, a security firm found “two sophisticated adversaries” on the DNC’s network. The firm linked both groups to “the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services.” They suspected that one was the FSB (Russia’s principal security agency) and that the other was the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency). The forensic evidence, according to Thomas Rid, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, is “very strong”: “used and reused tools, methods, infrastructure, even unique encryption keys” that indicate Russian involvement.

Meanwhile, five individuals familiar with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the breach told the Daily Beast Monday that the agency now suspects that “Russian government hackers breached the networks of the Democratic National Committee and stole emails.”

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook accused Russia of sabotaging the DNC to help Trump. Trump’s son, Donald, Jr. criticized Mook for “perpetuating … nonsense to try to gain some political capital,” while Manafort called Mook’s claims “pure obfuscation on the part of the Clinton campaign. What they don’t want to talk about is what’s in those emails.”

Moscow, for its part, refused to respond — a rare demurral.

What we’re still trying to find out: Whether Russia is actually trying to help Trump — and why.

Observers have noted that Trump’s foreign-policy positions align, in many respects, with Putin’s interests. Both Trump and Putin want to the U.S. to avoid military involvement in Ukraine; in Cleveland, Trump’s otherwise hands-off team “worked behind the scenes” to ensure the 2016 Republican platform wouldn’t call for “giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.” Trump welcomed Brexit, which many analysts believe will strengthen Putin’s hand. And, most importantly, both Trump and Putin want America to pull back from its commitment to intervene whenever a foreign power attacks one of its NATO allies — a fundamental rejection of the postwar European order.

Trump’s campaign rhetoric is the “biggest dream of everyone in the Kremlin,” Tina Khidasheli, defense minister of Georgia, a U.S. ally, told the Washington Post last month. “It’s scary, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible.”

Observers have also noted that Trump has been saying friendly things about Putin for years. In December, for instance, Putin called Trump a “colorful and talented” person; Trump said the compliment was an “honor.”

“When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia,” Trump continued. “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”

Franklin Foer recently cataloged several other examples of Trump’s pro-Putin rhetoric:

In 2007, he praised Putin for “rebuilding Russia.” A year later he added, “He does his work well. Much better than our Bush.” When Putin ripped American exceptionalism in a New York Times op-ed in 2013, Trump called it “a masterpiece.” Despite ample evidence, Trump denies that Putin has assassinated his opponents: “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.” … And [he’s] not just any old head of state: “I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A.”

Why the mutual flattery? In June, the Washington Post reported that this “dynamic illustrates the extent to which Trump’s worldview has been formed through the lens of commerce” rather than politics, citing his desire to build towers in Moscow and his reliance on Russian investors as reasons for his favorable attitude toward Russia and its leader.

Finally, observers have noted that many of Trump’s advisers — including his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort — have had ties to Russia.

According to the Post, Manafort has “done multimillion-dollar business deals with pro-Russian oligarchs and was a longtime adviser to the Russia-aligned Ukrainian president whose 2014 ouster triggered Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.”

An adviser who helped run Trump’s efforts in the New York primary, Michael Caputo, “lived in Russia in the 1990s” and also “had a contract for several months in 2000 with the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Putin’s image in the United States.”

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief who spoke on Trump’s behalf at the convention in Cleveland, “stunned the diplomatic community by sitting near Putin at a 2015 Moscow dinner honoring RT, the English-language network aligned with the Kremlin that broadcasts into the United States.” Flynn confirmed last week that he was paid to speak at the event.

And Carter Page, also a Trump foreign policy adviser, “once ran the Moscow office of Merrill Lynch, including advising the Russian energy giant Gazprom.”

These connections don’t prove anything. But they do raise troubling questions about whether state-sponsored Russian hackers are trying to interfere in a U.S. presidential election — and if so, to what end.

“Since I started digging into Manafort, these [‘you’ve been hacked’] messages have been a daily oc­­­­currence on my Yahoo account despite changing my p­­a­ssword often,” Alexandra Chalupa wrote in a May 3 email to Luis Miranda, the DNC’s communications director.

Or, as Chalupa told Isikoff: “This is really scary.”

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Convention diary

Click through for the full convention diary from Arkansas delegate Dustin McDaniel

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The big picture

Photographer Khue Bui is on the ground in Philadelphia, capturing all of the action for Yahoo News. Here’s his most unconventional pic of the day. See the rest.

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Trump tweaks Dems as convention starts

By Holly Bailey

Winston-Salem, N.C. — Donald Trump gleefully seized on party turmoil at the Democratic National Convention Monday, accusing Bernie Sanders of “folding” against rival Hillary Clinton, whom he attacked for using a “rigged” system to win the nomination.

Trump argued that Clinton had further betrayed Sanders and his supporters and showed “bad judgment” by picking Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate, whom he described as “the opposite of Bernie.”

Pointing to Kaine’s support of free trade, among other things, Trump accused Sanders of selling out to Clinton and betraying his supporters by backing her as the party nominee.

“Crazy Bernie has gone crazy,” Trump declared. “He’s losing his legacy. He’s just sort of giving up.”

(Read the full story here.)

Clinton, he said, could have thrown Sanders “a bone” and picked someone more fitting with the ideals of the Vermont senator and his supporters. “Just not Pocahontas,” he said, referring to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of his fiercest critics.

Trump’s comments came at the first of several events planned for this week aimed at trying to steal the spotlight away from the DNC in Philadelphia. Although presidential candidates typically lay low during their opponent’s convention, Trump has a full schedule of counterprogramming this week, including events in swing states like Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Trump is on the road for the first time with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, but the two barely shared a stage.

Trump went on to mock theories floated among some Democrats that the leak of DNC emails came from Russia who hacked the party to aid Trump’s campaign. “It’s one of the weirdest conspiracies,” Trump declared.

But, Trump added, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?” The two countries, he said, could partner and “knock the hell out of ISIS.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” he said.

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The best of the rest

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By the numbers

$4,000:

The estimated cost, per delegate, to attend the 2016 Democratic National Convention

$0:

The amount the DNC gives delegates to cover the cost of attending the convention

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What to watch Tuesday

Theme: “A Lifetime of Fighting for Children and Families”

Gavel time: 4:00 p.m.

Main order of business:

The roll call vote to officially nominate Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine

Speakers:

President Bill Clinton

Mothers of the Movement (featuring the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Dontré Hamilton, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, Hadiya Pendleton, and Sandra Bland)

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