The Manchurian Candidate contemplated a war hero who was brainwashed by the enemy and programmed as a sleeper agent or mole for the USSR. Is it possible that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a GOP sleeper agent infiltrating the DNC to undercut the Democratic party? Take a look at the argument below the fold ...
If she's on team blue - why is she wearing red?
The warning signs have been there for years. As co-chair of the "Red to Blue" campaign to help increase Democratic seats in the House, she refused to support the Democrats running against three potentially vulnerable Florida Republicans - Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart - because of her friendship with those Republicans.
As blogger Steve Clemmons wrote at the time:
The Diaz-Balart brothers and Ros-Lehtinen are not moderate in any sense of the word, are embracers of Bush’s wars, and have been responsible for sustaining a counter-productive embargo of Cuba by the United States that 183 nations of the world voted against us on this past year in the United Nations. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is helping to defend the political turf of not the best in the Republican Party — but the worst. (Article: Venting About Debbie Wasserman Schultz)
Financial management of the DNC has been - shall we say - suspect? Coming out of the 2012 election cycle,
the DNC was in dire straits with $21 million in debts and only $4.3 million cash in hand. Fortune magazine noted the magnitude of the problem in September 2013:
There’s another budget crisis in Washington, and it’s unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.
It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party — especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief — and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election (Article: The DNC in Nearly Broke)
The problems continue -
the DNC continues to dramatically lag the RNC in fundraising with only $7.6 million in available cash vs. its $6.2 million in debt. Its ability to provide a strong party infrastructure to support candidates (including for the White House) in 2016 is very much in doubt.
How about outcomes? As we all remember, the results of the 2014 elections were nothing short of disastrous for Democrats. Republicans already holding the House increased their majority by another 13 seats. Democrats lost an astonishing 9 seats in the Senate, flipping control to the GOP and putting Mitch McConnell into the Majority Leader's office. The Democrats had not even ONE pickup in the Senate. At the state level, Democrats won 11 gubernatorial races to 24 for the Republicans- a net pickup of 3 seats for the GOP (and can we REALLY even count Cuomo as a Democratic "win"?) It was a shellacking across the board.
More recently, she blocked the DNC from considering a resolution supporting the Administration's nuclear deal with Iran. While she has since personally come out in support, preventing the DNC from endorsing the signature foreign policy achievement of Obama's second term hardly can be seen as benefiting the Democratic party.
Then there is the debate schedule. Of course there is the anger it is generating among those supporting candidates other than Hillary Clinton, who feel DWS is deliberately minimizing their candidates' chances to put a message in front of voters. Fueling that internal division among Democrats by appearing to be less than an honest broker as party chair certainly is a problem.
More worrisome to me though, the comparatively few debates - and as Laura Clawson notes, the scheduling on dates that seem designed to minimize viewership - mean that the Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton are losing out on the opportunity to put their substantive message in front of millions of viewers. We see the GOP candidates dominating the media attention and setting the story line and Democratic coverage focused on topics like Hillary's email "scandal" or on the horse race (Bernie's climb in the polling, Will Biden or Won't He ...) instead of focusing attention on Democratic views on the issues. It is looking more and more like the DNC wants to cede to Republicans the opportunity to frame the national narrative going into this election cycle.
So ... how much more evidence is needed to conclude that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is working to harm the Democratic Party with whose leadership she has been entrusted? Could she be a secret GOP operative that hs infiltrated the highest levels of Democratic Party politics? The "Manchurian Chair" of the DNC?
Of course not - I don't wear tinfoil hats and know DK doesn't allow conspiracy theories. But here's the question that troubles me:
Could she be doing any worse for the party if she were?