Who but Debbie Wasserman Schultz -- with a straight face -- would tell 10 million Americans that 9 p.m. on a Sunday before a holiday, during the biggest NFL playoff weekend of the year, is the perfect time for the last Democratic debate before the primaries?
Speaking on CNN Sunday, the Democratic National Committee chair said, “I did my best to make sure, along with my staff and along with our debate partners, to come up with a schedule that we felt was going ... to maximize the opportunity for voters to see our candidates.”
This woman lies like a North Korean negotiator.
Before she went on the air Wasserman Schultz (DWS) had Eric Walker, her mouthpiece, hitting up the media, claiming scheduling the fourth debate after an NFL playoff double-header was intentional because why wouldn't there be a big audience thanks to preceding programming?
Please. Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley should be waving pickets.
Ahead of time-zone-adjusted Fast National returns from Nielsen, the two-hour debate scored a 7.1 overnight rating among households and 10.2 million Viewers for NBC.
Meanwhile, over on CBS, the Steelers-Broncos game averaged an astounding 43 million viewers, just shy of an all-time record for an AFC divisional playoff.
Unlike the Republicans, who are only in the middle of their 12-debate schedule, the Democrats are almost done. Only two debates remain, one on PBS in February and another on Univision in March. This fourth debate was the last before the Iowa caucuses.
Wasserman Schultz is fooling no one. Right now Hillary Clinton, looking for all kinds of favors from a DNC chair who happens also to be from one of the most important election-year states in the union, is propping her up like a wax museum artist.
The bottom line is, DWS might survive as DNC chair if she continues under Clinton's protection and Clinton wins in August and November. Mind you, Wasserman Schultz has to win her own primary -- a piece of cake in past elections. But this is an unpredictable year, as we've seen, and DWS is a woman who has infuriated many Democrats on the left with her handling of the party’s aforementioned presidential primary debates.
And now, for the first time since her arrival on Capitol Hill in 2005, she is facing a primary challenge from a liberal Wall Street reformer, Timothy Canova, a professor at the Shepard Broad College of Law at Nova Southeastern University. So she has Canova to survive.
Oh, yes: Also for her survival as DNC chair: As she makes appearances during the campaign on national television, somehow, some way, she must hold her propensity for committing open-mouth-insert-foot gaffes to a manageable minimum. Easier said than done for our girl.
One last word about Sunday night's debate. After it was over, one panelist on CNN said of Clinton's performance, "Well, I didn't think Hillary had a particularly good night, but it probably didn't hurt her."
Of course it didn't. Who was watching?
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
