Poor Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. She’s become a regular Debbie Downer to folks within her own party. Politico reports one Florida DNC member going public with opposition to the former chair of the party:
“We wish she would go away and stop being so public by doubling down on negative stories,” said Nikki Barnes, a progressive DNC member from Florida, who believes Wasserman Schultz left the national party “in shambles” while chair, culminating with the hack of DNC servers and the release of embarrassing internal emails by WikiLeaks in the 2016 campaign….
“This adds to Debbie being rebranded as the Democrats’ disastrous destruction,” Barnes said. “Those of us on the DNC know we have to rebrand ourselves and earn the people’s trust. And unfortunately Debbie’s name does not scream trust. It screams power. It screams limited access. It screams WikiLeaks now. DNC lawsuit. It screams a lot of negative things to the public. That’s not how we want to rebrand ourselves.”
Barnes wonders why Wasserman-Schultz insisted on sticking with Imran Awan long after he had been fired by other Democrats. Wasserman-Schultz gave an interview to the Sun-Sentinel last week in which she claimed the case against Awan may have been the result of profiling:
“I had grave concerns about his due process rights being violated,” she said. “When their investigation was reviewed with me, I was presented with no evidence of anything that they were being investigated for. And so that, in me, gave me great concern that his due process rights were being violated. That there were racial and ethnic profiling concerns that I had,” she said.
But Barnes tells Politico, “none of this makes sense. It doesn’t sound like racial profiling … there must have been something for her.” And he isn’t alone in thinking Wasserman-Schultz has outstayed her welcome. Democrat, R.T. Rybak who was the mayor of Minneapolis until 2014, tells Politico, “I can mention her name in Minneapolis and it gets a viscerally negative reaction, and I’ve found that to be the case in other parts of the country, too. Sadly, I think she deserves the negative reputation.”
John Morgan, a Democratic donor, tells Politico that being in power changed Wasserman-Schultz:
“In politics, you’re as strong as your friends. And she doesn’t have as many as she used to. And that’s her fault,” Morgan said.
Morgan and those who have known and observed Wasserman Schultz for decades say her demeanor began to change when she was DNC chair; power went to her head, they say, and mounting criticism then made her paranoid.
If Democrats are saying this in public, you can bet they are saying much worse in private. Her DNC was caught working against the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders. I doubt any of the Sanders supporters will forget that. That leaves, as a possible base of support, the people who voted for Hillary. No doubt if Hillary had won in 2016, Wasserman-Schultz would currently have a nice job working in the White House or maybe even a cabinet position. Since that didn’t happen, she really has nowhere to turn. Whatever chance she has for redemption is still many years away.
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