There are far too many self-serving careerist Democrats in politics to be able to say Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the worst. But people do say it. And she is certainly one of the worst. When she was a state senator in Florida she cut a gerrymandering deal with the Republicans that gave her an unassailably Jewish congressional district made for her forever. In return the GOP got far more narrowly safe congressional seats than their share of the statewide vote would make reasonable. And in the state legislature, as in Congress, she was and has been a deal-maker with all the worst crooks with special interests they needed taken care of-- from the private prison industry to the Fanjul brothers and their sugar empire. Politically, her conservatism has been a catastrophe for Florida Democrats. As the head of the DCCC's Red to Blue program, she endorsed three corrupt conservative Republicans instead of their Democratic challengers! She has been disrespectful-- and downright evil-- towards Democratic candidates who were not conservative self-funders. A New Dem sleazebag, she is constantly pushing the Democratic Party to the economic right from within. And she's been rewarded for her efforts with the chairmanship of the DNC. As chair of the DNC she has raised immense sums of money for herself and has undermined Democratic Party values and principles and pushed her own reactionary agenda, giving credence to right-wing nonsense from the "dangers" of medical marijuana to the "dangers" of opening up to Cuba. Yesterday Dan Balz and Philip Rucker reported in the Washington Post that Wasserman Schultz used her position as party chair to block a resolution at the DNC conclave in Minneapolis backing Obama on the Iran deal.
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz prevented consideration of a resolution at the party’s summer meeting here that praised President Obama and offered backing for the nuclear agreement with Iran, according to knowledgeable Democrats. The resolution was drafted with the intention of putting the national committee on record in support of the agreement as Congress prepares to take up the issue when members return from their August recess. As a fallback, James Zogby, the co-chair of the Resolutions Committee, led a move to prepare a letter of support for the president and the Iran agreement that eventually gained signatures from a sizable majority of the members of the national committee. Zogby said Saturday that, in the end, this produced a satisfactory outcome. “We wanted to show support for the president,” he said. “We found that the best way to show support was a letter that members would sign on to, and the overwhelming majority of DNC members signed onto the letter. This is the President Obama we elected in 2008 who said, ‘I choose diplomacy over conflict,’ and he did it.” ...Some Democrats on the national committee who were unhappy that the resolution did not come up for consideration said that, as DNC chair, Wasserman Schultz owed her allegiance in this instance to the president, regardless of her own local political considerations.
MoveOn.org had a petition up within hours to remove her as DNC chair. You can read it and sign it here. Isn't one Republican Party enough?UPDATE: Will A Progressive Primary Wasserman Schultz?Several progressives have been trying to persuade Tim Canova, a professor of law and public finance at the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, to run against Wasserman Schultz. This is an OpEd he wrote, published today by the Miami Herald which supports the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Restoration Act, a bill that was introduced by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, which has been ignored by Wasserman Schultz and her New Dem allies. We'll keep you posted if this looks like it will work out. Meanwhile, labor unions who are sick and tired of being betrayed by her have started circulating and posting these flyers:
