\u201cWe want debates!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\nAt the same time, her motives were called into question, most aggressively by O\u2019Malley, who accused the DNC of \u201crigging the process and stacking the deck\u201d in Clinton\u2019s favor. Given the desire of the other candidates for more debates, the insistence of the Clinton team on fewer, and Wasserman Schultz\u2019s status as a long-time Clinton ally (she was a co-chair of Hillary\u2019s 2008 campaign), the accusations carried a distinct whiff of plausibility.<\/p>\n
Through it all, the DNC\u2019s vice chairs and other officers offered scant defense of Wasserman Schultz\u2019s plan. Several felt (and still feel) strongly that more debates would benefit the party and its candidates, especially with the Republican Party staging more and gaining greater exposure for its sprawling field of hopefuls; that the impression the DNC was effectively running a protection racket on behalf of the front-runner would be damaging to the committee\u2019s image; and that, outcome aside, it was maddening and absurd that Wasserman Schultz had shut them out of the decision-making process.<\/p>\n
On September 9, Gabbard and Rybak went public with their dissent, issuing a joint statement calling for additional debates and an end to the exclusivity rule. But it was Gabbard who became the public face of internal opposition to Wasserman Schultz\u2019s plan. After an MSNBC interview last week in which she reiterated her stance, her chief of staff received a call from DWS\u2019s congressional chief of staff, Tracy Pough, who conveyed the message, according to Gabbard, \u201cthat if I\u2019m going to continue talking about that that I shouldn\u2019t go to the debate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DNC and Wasserman Schultz insist Gabbard wasn\u2019t disinvited. But they admit that she was asked to \u201crefocus\u201d her message and stop talking about \u201cprocess,\u201d with the strong suggestion that if she couldn\u2019t do those things, she should reconsider attending the debate. \u201cShe chose not to come because I guess she can\u2019t,\u201d Wasserman Schultz said on Tuesday in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.<\/p>\n
That interview was part of an escalating back-and-forth on cable, in which the broadsides issued by the combatants grew increasingly blunt and harsh\u2014with Gabbard introducing the issue of how the debate plan was determined. \u201cThe chairwoman said publicly that she had communicated and consulted with vice chairs and officers of the DNC prior to making her decision,\u201d Gabbard told Mitchell. \u201cThe fact is, there was no communication. There was no consultation with the vice chairs and officers, of which I am one. So it\u2019s unfortunate that she continues to say things that aren\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked later by Wolf Blitzer on CNN about Gabbard\u2019s charge that she dissembling, Wasserman Schultz bobbed and weaved, implying that it was Gabbard who was lying. \u201cShe\u2019s unfortunately spending a lot of time on process,\u201d the chairwoman said. \u201cThere were many people consulted, including officers, about our process.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe says she was never consulted,\u201d Blitzer pressed.<\/p>\n
Wasserman Schultz dodged again: \u201cWolf, this is the problem, that she wants to distract from the focus that needs to be on our candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watching this unseemly display unspool hours before the debate, Democratic insiders shook their heads\u2014in no small part because they believed it would lead nowhere useful, and certainly not to more debates. Because few ordinary voters seem concerned over the number of debates, the campaigns are unlikely to bring pressure to bear on Wasserman Schultz. And while Democratic activists and DNC members are concerned, they lack the power to force her hand. In fact, the only two players with the mojo to do so are Clinton and Barack Obama. But the former has no appetite for more debates and the latter has never evinced much interest in the DNC (except as a vehicle for his own reelection).<\/p>\n
It was Wasserman Schultz\u2019s performance on cable that pushed Rybak over the edge. \u201cIf this was an isolated incident, then it should be swept under the rug\u2014but it\u2019s not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I asked Rybak if he agreed with those who cast Wasserman Schultz as dictatorial. He said that he did. Calling her decisions \u201carbitrary\u201d and \u201creckless,\u201d he went on, \u201cAs a Democrat, you have to be able to bring people you don’t agree with into the tent. You can’t gavel them down out of order when they have a different opinion. You can’t go on national TV and say things about them that aren’t true. And this is something that frankly a lot of people have kept their mouth shut about for a long time. I have too. But I think the time has come for all those people who come up to me and say this is a problem to stop hiding behind their political expediency \u2026 We have the candidates. We have the issues. There’s only one single thing that I see standing between us and a great election coming up and that’s the fact that the person who is supposed to leading us is not leading us.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Rybak suggested, he is far from alone in casting broader doubt on Wasserman Schultz\u2019s stewardship of the DNC. Her critics level an assortment of charges against her: that, in the age of super-PACs, the Koch Brothers, and an array of other Republican billionaires prepared to devote vast sums to the causes of recapturing the White House and retaining the GOP\u2019s hold on Congress, she is ill-equipped to steer the party as it navigates the forbidding electoral terrain ahead; that she is insufficiently tech savvy; that she is neither attuned to the party\u2019s grassroots nor focused on the methodical expansion of the Obama coalition; that she and her staff are not unlike Selina Myer and hers on \u201cVeep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Says the Democrat with close ties to the committee: \u201cThe next chair is going to have to burn the place down and rebuild it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wasserman Schultz and her staff, sensing a brewing insurrection at the DNC, are busily circling the wagons. Asked for comment on Rybak’s criticisms, they provided statements from her chief of staff Amy Dacey, vice chair Maria Elena Durazo,\u00a0finance chair Henry Munoz, treasurer Andy Tobias, and secretary Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.\u00a0All expressed delight in the Vegas debate. Some commended Wasserman Schultz for her role in making it happen\u2014or for being “hardworking” or a prodigious fundraiser. But just two addressed, and then only obliquely, the\u00a0Gabbard contretemps or the thrust of Rybak’s comments: Durazo (“[DWS]\u00a0is committed to manage any disagreements, like the number of debates, in a way that keeps us focused on our priorities”) and Rawlings-Blake (“The Chair regularly consults with DNC officers on a host of topics”).<\/p>\n
With the Democrat-on-Democrat conflict ratcheting up, people close to the DNC predict a full-on assault on Rybak by Wasserman Schultz and her allies. If it happens, the internecine battle is likely to widen and get uglier\u2014and quickly. Mo Elleithee, who until a few months ago served as the committee’s communications director and was intimately involved in the deliberations over the debate plan, has already cast his lot with Rybak. “You\u2019d be hard pressed to find a DNC member who doesn\u2019t absolutely love RT,” Elleithee told me late Thursday night. “He’s a glass-half-full kind of guy who always does everything he can to help the team. That\u2019s what makes this whole brouhaha so remarkable. And it was all so avoidable.”<\/p>\n
However the drama over the state of the DNC and Wasserman Schultz’s future now unfolds, the inaugural debate on Tuesday night offered critics of her plan to limit such events still more ammunition, as Clinton\u2019s performance made a mockery of any calculation that more debates would work to her disadvantage. And when O\u2019Malley called out Wasserman Schultz from the debate stage\u2014\u201cI see the chair of the DNC here, look how glad we are actually to be talking about the issues that matter the most to people around the kitchen table\u201d\u2014the lusty roar from the crowd made clear that its sympathies were with him and not her.<\/p>\n
Early the next morning, I ran into O\u2019Malley as he prepared to appear on \u201cMorning Joe.\u201d Beaming at the memory, he crowed, \u201cThe loudest cheers were from her own committee members!\u201d<\/p>\n
Contributing:\u00a0Steven Yaccino<\/em><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/politics\/articles\/2015-10-16\/insurrection-erupts-at-the-democratic-national-committee<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Labeled “an enemy of free speech, as well as a liar” By DNC Vice Chair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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