US Democrats scrambled Sunday to contain damaging revelations of an insider effort to hobble Bernie Sanders's White House campaign that threatened an uneasy truce on the eve of the party's convention. Democrats converge Monday on Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love", to elevate Hillary Clinton as the party's nominee who will battle Republican Donald Trump in 2016's presidential election.
After a hard-fought primary campaign, the party had been heading to the Democratic National Convention far more unified than the Republicans, whose fissures were laid bare this week as they confirmed brash billionaire Trump as their flag-bearer.
"In Philadelphia we will offer a very different vision for our country," Clinton pledged. "One that is about building bridges, not walls, embracing the diversity that makes our country great."
Her quest received a boost Saturday when she introduced Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, a savvy Spanish-speaking US senator with a bright smile but "a backbone of steel", according to Clinton.
But even as the party basked in the lovefest that was the first Clinton-Kaine rally, there was a whiff of scandal that could badly rattle party unity.
A cache of leaked emails from Democratic Party leaders' accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to hobble the upstart Sanders campaign that had competed with Clinton - including by seeking to present him as an atheist to undermine him in highly religious states.
The Vermont senator Sunday repeated calls for the resignation of the Democratic National Committee's chairwoman, whose leadership was already under fire and whose impartiality was called into question by the leaks.
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