The End Of Debbie Wasserman Schultz

If you've been following DWT long, you've already read about what a waste of a congressional seat corrupt New Dem Debbie Wasserman Schultz is. We first came across her when, in 2006, as head of the DCCC's toxic Red-to-Blue program, she urged Florida voters to back Republican incumbents, cronies of hers-- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and Lincoln Diaz-Balart-- over 3 Democratic candidates, including Annette Taddeo and Joe Garcia. She didn't just make that decision, she broadcast it publicly, very loud and very clear and even persuaded some nit-wit congressional follower of hers, Kendrick Meek, to parrot her stupid remarks.

Though fired as the Red-to-Blue chair, the grasping and craven Wasserman Schultz landed on her feet and has been working steadily to climb the leadership ladder. She's very disliked personally but also very feared. Like her idol, Rahm Emanuel, she envisions herself being the first Jewish Speaker and tries buying her colleagues' affections with contributions from the sleazy industries-- Sugar and Private Prisons-- that are financing her climb to the top. Pelosi detests her and passed over her as DCCC Chair and gave it to the incompetent and similarly corrupt Steve Israel instead. But someone talked Obama into making her DCCC Chair. It's been all downhill ever since. You may recall when Florida Democratic powerbroker John Morgan spilled the beans in June about what people in DC think of her:

John Morgan, was so furious at Wasserman Schultz's idiotic remarks about medical marijuana that he was quoted in the Miami Herald that among "most-powerful players in Washington, D.C.… Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn’t just disliked, she’s despised. She’s an irritant."

Today the shit hit the fan in a big way, first at Politico and then at Buzzfeed, where anonymous sources from Team Obama let lose in the nastiest possible way on someone who has earned every bit of bad karma coming back to bite her now. The Politico piece was especially eviscerating and a delight to read. Here are the meanest parts:

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in a behind-the-scenes struggle with the White House, congressional Democrats and Washington insiders who have lost confidence in her as both a unifying leader and reliable party spokesperson at a time when they need her most.

…The perception of critics is that Wasserman Schultz spends more energy tending to her own political ambitions than helping Democrats win. This includes using meetings with DNC donors to solicit contributions for her own PAC and campaign committee, traveling to uncompetitive districts to court House colleagues for her potential leadership bid and having DNC-paid staff focus on her personal political agenda.

She’s become a liability to the DNC, and even to her own prospects, critics say.

“I guess the best way to describe it is, it’s not that she’s losing a duel anywhere, it’s that she seems to keep shooting herself in the foot before she even gets the gun out of the holster,” said John Morgan, a major donor in Wasserman Schultz’s home state of Florida.

The stakes are high. Wasserman Schultz is a high-profile national figure who helped raise millions of dollars and served as a Democratic messenger to female voters during a presidential election in which Obama needed to exploit the gender gap to win, but November’s already difficult midterms are looming.

One example that sources point to as particularly troubling: Wasserman Schultz repeatedly trying to get the DNC to cover the costs of her wardrobe.

In 2012, Wasserman Schultz attempted to get the DNC to pay for her clothing at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, multiple sources say, but was blocked by staff in the committee’s Capitol Hill headquarters and at President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago.

She asked again around Obama’s inauguration in 2013, pushing so hard that Obama senior adviser-- and one-time Wasserman Schultz booster — Valerie Jarrett had to call her directly to get her to stop. (Jarrett said she does not recall that conversation.) One more time, according to independent sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, she tried again, asking for the DNC to buy clothing for the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner?

Wasserman Schultz denies that she ever tried to get the DNC to pick up her clothing tab. “I think that would be a totally inappropriate use of DNC funds,” she said in a statement. “I never asked someone to do that for me, I would hope that no one would seek that on my behalf, and I’m not aware that anyone did.”

Tracie Pough, Wasserman Schultz’s chief of staff at the DNC and her congressional office, was also involved in making inquiries about buying the clothing, according to sources. Pough denies making, directing or being aware of any inquiries.

But sources with knowledge of the discussions say Wasserman Schultz’s efforts couldn’t have been clearer. “She felt firmly that it should happen,” said a then-DNC staffer of the clothing request. “Even after it was explained that it couldn’t, she remained indignant.”

This story is based on interviews with three dozen current and former DNC staffers, committee officers, elected officials, state party leaders and top Democratic operatives in Washington and across the country.

Many expect a nascent Clinton campaign will engineer her ouster. Hurt feelings go back to spring 2008, when while serving as a co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Wasserman Schultz secretly reached out to the Obama campaign to pledge her support once the primary was over, sources say.

Meanwhile, the Obama team was so serious about replacing her after 2012 that they found a replacement candidate to back before deciding against it, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Obama and Wasserman Schultz have rarely even talked since 2011. They don’t meet about strategy or messaging. They don’t talk much on the phone.

…The White House is staring at two years of life under a GOP-controlled House and Senate. The DNC chair, however, isn’t involved in the strategy talks with the president.

They don’t want her there.

For even the occasional Obama briefing by the heads of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, she is not invited. That includes a key session on July 31, the last day the House was in town before the August recess, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), DCCC Chair Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC executive director Kelly Ward sat on the couches in the Oval Office running through the political landscape for the president.

Wasserman Schultz described her relationship with the president as speaking to him on an “as-needed basis, whenever I have a need to talk to them or give them a sense of what’s going on, but also, as it happens, as we connect on the trail.” She declined to provide details of how often, where or when.

When Kaine was DNC chair during the president’s first year in office, he had a monthly lunch with Obama on the calendar (although not all of the lunches actually occurred as planned). Wasserman Schultz demurred when asked if it would be fair to characterize her as speaking “regularly” with the president.

“The best way to describe it is: as often as we need,” she said.

According to multiple people familiar with the president, Obama’s opinion of Wasserman Schultz was sealed back in 2011. Shortly after becoming chair, she pushed hard for a meeting with the president that she kicked off by complaining that she had been blocked from hiring the daughter of a donor-- who’d been on staff in her congressional office-- as a junior staffer to be the DNC’s Jewish community liaison.

Obama summed up his reaction to staff afterward: “Really?”

Last summer, Wasserman Schultz and the White House clashed again.

Wasserman Schultz resisted Obama circle favorites Marlon Marshall and Buffy Wicks replacing Patrick Gaspard as executive director. When Jarrett found out that Wasserman Schultz had had her daughter sit in on the interview with Wicks at the end of July 2013, she called to register her dismay, describing Wasserman Schultz’s behavior, according to people familiar with the conversation, as “completely unprofessional and rude.”

Shortly thereafter, the DNC chairwoman spoke at length to Politico about how she planned to leverage the donors she’d met as DNC chairwoman into fundraising to build chits for her own political future. Jarrett was infuriated and called Wasserman Schultz.

Jarrett had always been a defender, she reminded Wasserman Schultz, according to people familiar with the call, but now she delivered a clear message: She was disappointed by the narrative in the story the chairwoman herself had fed, and cautioned her to remember that Obama is head of the party.

Obama’s team came very close to replacing Wasserman Schultz after the 2012 race.

At the Charlotte convention, Wasserman Schultz’s DNC staffers assembled a collection of perks-- entry to her skybox, access to the chairwoman’s lounge-- for House members and candidates she was hoping to attract for her leadership run and DNC voting members she would need to retain her DNC post should Obama replace her. She also had her DNC staff explore and plot how she could remain chairwoman if Obama lost the race.

…According to multiple people who have been in the room for DNC donor meetings, Wasserman Schultz regularly finishes a pitch to donors by asking them to give money to the DNC and her leadership PAC, or her congressional committee, or both. There’s nothing illegal about this, but donors often grumble privately that this sends mixed messages about her priorities and why she’s interested in meeting with them… DNC policy is not to accept donations from lobbyists. However, her own DWS PAC accepts lobbyist money. Wasserman Schultz says this has never been a problem. “DWS PAC is a separate entity,” she said, denying that the initials have any relation to her name, although her father used to be its treasurer and it’s run day-to-day by Jason O’Malley, whose salary is split between the DNC, DWS PAC and Wasserman Schultz’s congressional campaign committee. He works out of a cubicle in the finance department at DNC headquarters.

Wasserman Schultz said she’s not going anywhere.

I suspect she won't weather the killing buzz and will resign imminently-- perhaps as early as tomorrow. She should take Steve Israel with her.