Debbie Wasserman Schultz may be a Jewish girl from New York, but I'm guessing she's discovered what it's like to be Amish. Certainly she has a good idea of what a shunning is.
Think about everything you ever knew about the Amish practice of using social exclusion to enforce Amish church rules, and you've got the plight of Debbie among the Democrats since Nov. 8. It's likely to get worse before it gets better.
Going into the next Congress, Wasserman Schultz will have to restore a mountain of lost faith in her usefulness to the party and its values. The disgraced DNC chair threw softballs to Hillary Clinton, curveballs to Bernie Sanders and struck out with virtually everyone else. The only thing she salvaged was reelection to her House seat.
"When she returns to the House, Debbie will be the loneliest congresswoman in Washington," a former congressional aide told Sunshine State News.
She won't be the leading Democrat on any committee, won't be trusted with a party confidence that rises above water cooler gossip, plain won't have a reason to draw a crowd.
The aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday, "Hillary Clinton’s performance-enhancing steroids were Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, and an army of Clinton partisans more than willing to forgo their autonomy as journalists, as long as they propelled Clinton’s candidacy. Nobody ever will forget that. History won't forget it."
He surmised that if Clinton had won last week's election, probably many of DWS' sins would have been forgiven if not forgotten. "The congresswoman will be lucky to find somebody willing to be seen with her at lunch, that's how unpopular she is."
Until WikiLeaks revealed she helped Clinton cheat in the Democratic primaries, her deception and a great many of her most embarrassing gaffes were deliberately swept under the rug because she had been President Obama's personal appointment. He had rewarded her for her part in delivering Florida to him in 2012.
In a statement the day Wasserman Schultz resigned her DNC chairmanship, President Obama said he was “grateful” for her service. “Her fundraising and organizing skills were matched only by her passion, her commitment and her warmth,” the president said. “And no one works harder for her constituents in Congress than Debbie Wasserman Schultz.”
Others were less generous.
“On the whole, I’d rather she not be in Philadelphia,” said James Carville, a longtime Clinton confidant.
Journalists across the country, particularly the media of the left, began on Nov. 9 to play the blame game, picking apart the election results, assessing how such a "surprise" loss happened. In virtually all of the post-mortems I've seen, Wasserman Schultz is the object of wilting criticism. For example, The Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins said this: "I’m going to start placing the lion’s share of the blame for the Democrats’ losses this year on Debbie Wasserman Schultz."
"From the beginning, she helped to game the system. I won’t say rig. She gamed the system. She gamed the party in favor of Hillary Clinton, because she and Clinton are good, close friends. Wasserman Schultz knew she was going to get a spot in that Hillary Clinton administration cabinet somewhere. How’d that turn out for you by the way, Debbie?"
Also the day after the election, Wasserman Schultz's Facebook page lit up with comments like this one from John Langley, who got 281 Facebook "likes" for his remark:
"Although I welcome your return to Washington, Debbie, I do believe you are one of the reasons for the loss of our candidate, Hillary Clinton. Your email proved to Bernie supporters that the DNC was not honest with Bernie. Hillary Clinton lost young voters by 2-3 points in every state."
By early next year, there will be an entirely new set of Democratic National Committee leaders with a huge turnover of staff. Former DNC chairman Howard Dean, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm have emerged as early prospects for the job to succeed Donna Brazile, who is set to step down from her interim role in early 2017.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
