Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made history, though perhaps not the kind of history she hoped. There have been many DNC chairmen who have distinguished themselves in that office and other respects: August Belmon (1860-1872), Abram S. Hewitt (1876-77), Cordell Hull (1921-24), John J. Raskob (1928-32), James A. Farley (1932-40), Henry Jackson (1960-61), Robert Strauss (1972-77), Ed Rendell (1999-2001). Wasserman Schultz does not rise to those heights. I’m not sure she was the worst Democratic national chairman of all time, but only because I don’t know much about many of the men and women who have held the office.
Wasserman Schultz is being given the boot not so much because Bernie Sanders people want her out as because no one wants her in. She was presumably chosen by Barack Obama because she is Jewish, like many Democratic officeholders and contributors, and because she is a woman, like most Democratic voters. And perhaps because she is from Florida, the closest state in the 2000 and 2012 general elections. She is a strong partisan — too strong, in my view, because she constantly makes outrageous arguments and statements that can’t withstand even the most partisanly liberal fact-checking, as this example from 2012 shows. Nor has she given any public indication I’m aware of that she has a charming personality.
The Democratic Party has dozens of officeholders and party leaders who are Jewish, female, knowledgeable and charming. Any of them might have effectively represented the party and its eventual nominee. Debbie Wasserman Schultz hasn’t done so, which is why no serious person is objecting to her being shoved aside.
