PHILADELPHIA: The US Democrats converge on the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ to elevate Hillary Clinton this coming week as the party’s nominee will battle Republican Donald Trump in 2016’s presidential election. The Democratic National Convention kicks off on Monday in Philadelphia with the party more unified than the Republicans, whose fissures were laid bare this week as they confirmed brash billionaire Trump as their flag-bearer. But frustrations are nevertheless swirling as the delegates bicker about the Democratic nominating process and new hiccups over Clinton camp emails. She pledged, “Next week in Philadelphia we will offer a very different vision for our country, one that is about building bridges, not walls, embracing the diversity that makes our country great.” Her quest received a boost on 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. She said, Kaine is everything that Donald Trump and (Republican running-mate) Mike Pence are not. The 58-year-old Kaine, from a crucial battleground state, delivered a rousing speech in Miami, Florida, laying out sharp contrasts between Clinton and the Republican nominee. “She doesn’t insult people, she listens to them,” he told the Miami crowd. “She doesn’t trash our allies, she respects them. And she’ll always have our backs.” Following the appearance Trump tweeted that he had seen “Crooked Hillary and Tim Kaine together. IS and our other enemies are drooling. They don’t look presidential to me!” The Democratic convention gavels in at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Monday in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, with First Lady Michelle Obama and Clinton’s former rival in the primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders, scheduled as the headliners. Former president Bill Clinton is the star on Tuesday, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden take the stage on Wednesday. The Democrats have considerably more star-power than the Republicans who gathered in Cleveland, where both former Bush presidents steered clear, as did former Republican presidential nominees John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012). Even as the party basked in the love fest that was the first Clinton-Kaine rally, there was still a whiff of scandal that could rattle party unity. A cache of leaked emails from the Democratic Party leaders’ accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to hobble the upstart Sanders campaign, including by seeking to present him as an atheist to undermine him in religious states. Trump has pounced on the leaks. He tweeted on Saturday, “Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more. On-line from Wikileaks (sic), really vicious. RIGGED.” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver demanded answers as well. “Someone does have to be held accountable,” he told ABC News. He added that the Democratic Party seemed to have its fingers on the scale for Clinton. Sanders’ delegates fumed when their efforts to end the party’s use of super-delegates — grandees who are free to vote for whomever they choose at the convention — mostly failed during a series of rules committee votes on Saturday, according to The Washington Post newpaper. But they won a compromise victory when the committee agreed to form a commission tasked with reducing the number of super-delegates in the nomination process, something Sanders has long demanded. Meanwhile, the delegates and the activists descended on Philadelphia on Saturday where the police were intensifying security operations. “We shouldn’t be fearful, we’re Americans,” delegate Patti Norkiewicz of Florida told AFP, two days after Trump offered a dark vision of a nation besieged by chaos and violence. “We should be proud, united, and we’re allowed to disagree,” she said. Clinton is seeking to become the first female commander in chief, eight years after Obama made history as the nation’s first black president. While Sanders has publicly endorsed his former rival, many of his most fervent supporters are organising protests in Philadelphia, beginning on Sunday, with the largest demonstration expected on the convention’s opening day Monday. Clinton is “disingenuous, not real,” coordinator for the Occupy DNC Convention protest group Laurie Cestnick told AFP. “We’ve come to see that she’s part of a corrupt system.” Protests at the Republican convention which ended on Thursday were underwhelming, with only a few demonstrations drawing hundreds of people. Organisers in Philadelphia say that they are expecting thousands.