Democrats play down claims of party disunity after chaotic scenes

Democrats have played down the angry scenes of party disunity that marred the opening night of the party's national convention when supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed.

Rival chants and booing of Mrs Clinton's name cast a shadow over an event aimed at presenting a united front against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on the eve of the former US secretary of state being official made the party's nominee.

Vice-president Joe Biden, who will address the convention delegates in the Wells Fargo Centre in Philadelphia on Wednesday, brushed off talk of there being "any fracture in the party" following a fractious primary election won by Mrs Clinton against a dogged Mr Sanders.

“Look, they worked really hard,” Mr Biden told reporters on a visit to the convention floor on Tuesday. “They did more to change the attitude in the party than anything that has happened in a long, long time. It’s all for the better. It’s all for the better.”

Party conventions were tense affairs, he stressed, with supporters of losing candidates believing “that it should be us”. He rejected a suggestion that Democratic officials tipped the balance in favour of Mrs Clinton, as revealed in leaked internal party emails released on Friday.

The Clinton campaign has claimed that the emails, which surfaced on Wikileaks, were stolen in a computer hack and leaked by "Russian state actors" to help Mr Trump's bid for the White House. They have aggravated grievances among Sanders supporters about Mrs Clinton and confirmed suspicions that the race was rigged against their anti-establishment candidate.

“He didn’t lose or she didn’t win because of any emails – come on, man,” Mr Biden told one reporter, dismissing the email scandal. “[At] the end of the day is that Bernie and his supporters did more to change the party than the party did to change him.”

Verbal skirmishes

Clinton spokeswoman

Jennifer Palmieri

on Tuesday put the verbal skirmishes between the rival supporters down to a spirited display by the people who support them the most.

“In this room are Hillary Clinton’s most passionate supporters and Bernie Sanders’s most passionate supporters, the actual delegates, the people who not just believe in their candidate but were selected to represent the people who voted for their candidate,” she said.

The scenes reflected the Democratic Party’s “more substantive and productive” primary, she said, drawing a contrast with the Republican primary, “which was a race to the bottom”.

The emails controversy was escalated to a diplomatic level on Tuesday when US secretary of state John Kerry raised the issue of the hacking of the Democratic Party emails in a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Before their meeting, Mr Lavrov rejected accusations that the Kremlin was behind the cyber theft.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign is bracing itself for further leaked Democratic emails designed to inflict political damage on the party.

“The Wikileaks leak was obviously designed to hurt our convention,” Ms Palmierisaid. “I don’t think they’re done. That’s how they operate.”

Mrs Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, is the keynote speaker on the second night of the convention, ahead of President Barack Obama and Mr Biden speaking on Wednesday night. Mrs Clinton is poised to accept the Democratic nomination during her speech on Thursday.