Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in political trouble long before the recent leak of party emails confirmed what everybody knew: Wasserman Schultz used her position as chair of the Democratic National Committee subtly to assist her preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.
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The emails from various DNC officials suggest that the party organization was favoring the candidacy of Hillary Clinton over that of her Democratic rival, Sen.
“This right now, is the greatest country on earth”, she said.
Sanders, one of the main speakers on the first evening, portrayed Clinton as a fellow soldier in his fight for economic equality, but some of his supporters booed the mere mention of her name.
“That’s news to me”, she said, adding “I have not talked to anybody about that, so it’s… not necessarily in my future”.
But Sanders repeatedly voiced frustration with a DNC and party establishment he felt was stacked against him, and the resentment from Sanders and his supporters threatened to disrupt the convention.
There could yet be tension, however.
On Monday morning, Wasserman Schultz was booed during her speech before the Florida Democratic delegation in the city.
The chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) says she will step down after the party’s convention in the run-up to the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
Wasserman Schultz has served atop the DNC since 2011, keeping the Florida seat in Congress she’s held since 2005 as well. And the walls were lined with headlines touting a triumph that meant more to her than all the titles Pelosi could confer: Wasserman Schultz, in her freshman term, had passed a law – itself extraordinary – establishing Jewish American Heritage Month.
For years though, it seemed, Wasserman Schultz was unstoppable. A mother of three, she is a breast cancer survivor. But she stepped aside, bowing to pressure from Democrats who feared the mere sight of her on stage would prompt strong opposition from Sanders’ backers. The reasoning then was that Clinton was a poor debater. And this wasn’t a few inexperienced low-level staffers conspiring to schedule debates on the weekend to limit Sanders’ exposure. Additionally, Wasserman Schultz slotted five Sanders loyalists on the platform drafting committee, a key Sanders demand.
The Democratic National Committee is offering its “deep and honest apology” to Bernie Sanders, his supporters and the entire party for what it calls “the inexcusable remarks made over email”. She is shouldering the blame for revelations in almost 20,000 DNC emails released by WikiLeaks Friday.
As they arrived in Philadelphia, there was a sense of relief among some Democratic delegates that they could begin to put the Wasserman Schultz controversy behind them.
Obama, who named Wasserman Schultz to the post in 2011, lavished praise on her. She brought to the job her prodigious fundraising skills and what had been a talent for balancing effective attacks against Republicans with a sympathetic (to her allies, anyway) presence.
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He said Clinton should follow Wasserman Schultz’s lead and drop out over her failure to safeguard top-secret, classified information both on her unauthorized home server and while traveling overseas. This afternoon, I called her to let her know that I am grateful.
