A female Democratic National Committee member has accused the committee of "clearing a path" for Hillary Clinton so she can be its presidential nominee for the 2016 elections, according to an interview with the Daily Mail. Two of Clinton's Democratic presidential rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, have also made similar accusations in recent weeks, as has Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
The five elected women in the DNC's upper power echelons decided "early on" that Clinton will be the Democratic Party's nomination, according to the committeewoman, who spoke to the Daily Mail on condition of anonymity.
"The party's female leaders really want to make a woman the next president. I haven't heard anyone say we should make Hillary undergo a trial by fire. To the contrary, the women in charge seem eager, more and more, to have her skate into the general [election]," she said.
"I have nothing against women in politics, but it's not healthy for the party if we get behind a woman because she's a woman, and risk having her implode after she's nominated because she isn't tested enough now."
Sanders, Clinton's closest Democratic rival, and O'Malley have also both said they believe DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is intentionally limiting the number of officially sanctioned debates in order to rig the primary process for Clinton, as HNGN previously reported.
"Is this a secret? I mean, all the energy is around Hillary right now, and we're paring back the number of debates. That's going to give her a lot fewer opportunities to screw up," the committeewoman told the Daily Mail, noting that two of the organization's vice chairs also took part in the decision.
In the 2008 cycle, eventual nominee then-Sen. Barack Obama and Clinton debated each other 27 times, including outside non-DNC sanctioned debates. However, this time around, the DNC is only holding six sanctioned debates and is enforcing an unprecedented rule that practically bans candidates from participating in other debates.
Wasserman Schultz refuses to budge on the issue, despite calls for more debates from two Democratic candidates, thousands of Democratic constituents, and even two DNC vice chairs, one of whom was reportedly disinvited from the first Democratic primary debate held Tuesday for making a public call for more debates.
Wednesday night on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," GOP candidate Donald Trump complained about the first Democratic debate, hosted by CNN, saying that there were no hard-hitting questions that pitted the candidates against each other, reports Salon.
"CNN did not hit them like they hit [the GOP contenders], and didn't make them fight. There was very little fight in them," Trump said.
He speculated that this was probably because the DNC asked CNN to take it easy on the candidates.
"Maybe the Democrats, headed by whoever might be heading it, maybe they said, 'This is the way we want it, and we insist on doing it this way," he said. "It's very possible."
