How the DNC Chair Has Sacrificed Her Party To Stay In Power
This week, Debbie Wasserman Schultz continued her “scorched earth” campaign against the Democratic Party in an all-or-nothing bid to secure a Hillary Clinton presidency. While the Clinton machine continues to gain momentum, the Democratic National Committee has been left broken on the side of the road that leads to the Clinton occupied White House.
Just how badly has Debbie Wasserman Schultz divided and damaged her party from her throne atop the DNC? Here is a look at the trail of destruction that has been left in her wake as she blazes a trail to Washington D.C. for her only remaining ally in the entire Democratic Party:
Anything to Maintain Her Position: During the 2008 Democratic primary, Wasserman Schultz was the co-chair of Clinton’s presidential run. After Super Tuesday, when Clinton was only able to capture 10 of the 25 primaries, she reached out to Obama campaign leaders through back channels to let them know that she was ready to jump off the sinking Clinton ship to help Obama capture the White House.
Three years later, Obama’s chose her to lead the Democratic National Committee, becoming only the third female DNC chief in history. She was promptly pushed into the spotlight of the Obama re-election campaign that focused on equality for women as a major issue to hammer Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
Since then, however, Wasserman Schultz has repeatedly butted heads with the Obama White House over much publicized conflicts including repeated requests for the DNC to pay for her wardrobe, and the White House denying her request to hire a suporter’s daughter in return for donations.
All About the Benjamins: Since her public “break up” with President Obama, she has spent nearly as much time as the head of the DNC raising money for herself as she has for the rest of the party. She has repeatedly met with DNC donors to solicit contributions for her own PAC while using valuableDNC resources to focus on her personal political agenda. She even went so far as to have her DNC staff explore how she could remain chairwoman if Obama lost his re-election campaign in 2012. “She was trying to figure out what the protocol was,” said a DNC staffer at the time. “What was the exact length of her term, and what would it take to run.”
After Obama locked down his second term, and was unable to jettison Wasserman Schultz after using her to court the female vote that locked up his re-election, she turned back to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for support, and began working behind the scenes to pave the way for her poorly concealed plan to run in 2016, including pushing through an $84 million plan to hold the next nomination convention in Philadelphia …a political stronghold for Clinton.
This plan, however, comes on the heels of the DNC announcing its fiscal insolvency. Having just finished paying off its $24 million debt from the 2012 presidential election, the DNC is cash poor and is unequipped to provide any real financial assistance to any candidate…adding to the pressure for the party to nominate Hillary and her personal money generating juggernaut.
Nothing to Talk About: The official Democratic Primary debate schedule created by Wasserman Schultz contains a paltry six televised debates, with the first one postponed until October. Even though the DNC is cash strapped, and televised debates bring in big donations, she continues to defy the will of her party by refusing to consider adding more debates. Most political experts agree that fewer debates plays into the Clinton campaign strategy of saying as little as possible to keep potential voters from abandoning her a third time as she looks to secure the nomination.
Wasserman Schultz has even gone so far as to threaten that any candidate or media outlet that participates in debates outside the official schedule will be banned from the remainder of the party sanctioned debates in 2016, which has caused her own party leaders to publicly accuse her of being “undemocratic.”
Martin O’Malley, the former Governor of Maryland and Clinton challenger for the party nomination crushed Wasserman Schultz at last weekend’s DNC meeting by using his allotted time in front of the party to decry her decision to limit debate:
“This is totally unprecedented in our party’s history. This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before. Whose decree is it exactly? Where did it come from? To what end? For what purpose? What national or party interest does this decree serve? How does this help us tell the story of the last eight years of Democratic progress?”
On the Fast Track: In June, Wasserman Schultz led a small breakaway contingent of Democrats that voted to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The hotly contested trade pact, which has been negotiated behind closed doors for years, has been shaping up to be a major bone of contention between Democratic Primary candidates.
While Bernie Sanders, her closest rival, has been an outspoken opponent of the TPP, Hillary Clinton has vacillated between outright support and a vague neutrality…preferring to let Wasserman Schultz partner with Obama and Republicans to ram the TPP through before the first scheduled debate.
I Came I saw Iran: At the DNC last weekend, Debbie Wasserman Schultz blocked consideration of a resolution to support President Obama and his nuclear deal with Iran. The resolution would have put the Democratic Party on record as supporting the agreement reached between world powers and Iran last month.
In much the same way she paved the way for Clinton to continue moving through the primary without having to voice an opinion on the TPP, Wasserman Schultz has again “fallen on a grenade” for Clinton and ensured that having no public opinion until the conflict has passed will keep the Clinton machine rolling forward unscathed.
No Political Capital in the Capitol: Over the last eight years, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has burned every possible bridge she could have walked across to get from the barren wasteland of political impotence, and back to relevancy.
But now, she only has one card left to play…crawling back to the Democratic Primary candidate she first abandoned in 2008. Whether she will continue to be employed in 2016 depends on her ability to continue selling out her party in the hopes that Hillary Clinton will allow her to sit under the table and live off the scraps that fall from her plate.
