Schultz problem

The Democrats' Wasserman Schultz problem

Removing the DNC chairwoman might not be worth the headache.

By Gabriel Debenedetti and Daniel Strauss

Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn’t going anywhere.

Not yet, anyway.

Months of Democratic frustration with the leader of the national party burst into clear view this week, leading to widespread speculation on Capitol Hill Wednesday about whether she will be able to finish out her term as Democratic National Committee chairwoman.

The debate over her future, however, overlooked one important element: the reality that replacing a party chair would be a complicated — and almost certainly messy — affair, one that the party is eager to avoid as it tries to heal its wounds after a bruising primary battle between Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t know why we’re spending so much time on the chair of the Democratic National Committee, I don’t know what the point is,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, making the case that replacing the chairwoman, whom she supports, would be far more complicated than many appreciate. “I was, for a long time — 20 years — a member of the Democratic National Committee. We thought we had some influence as to who would be the chairman of the party. [But] we know it’s up to the nominee. I think this is not helpful in terms of unifying the party."

Any short-term move to install a new committee chief would likely need to involve the hand of President Barack Obama, the de facto party leader who has demonstrated zero intention of stepping into the latest round of frustration with Wasserman Schultz over her stewardship of the Clinton-Sanders primary.

The simplest way to install a new chair before there is a formal nominee would be a mandate from the White House, which has had tense relations with Wasserman Schultz in the past. But with Obama abroad, an aide to Vice President Joe Biden told The Hill — the first to report on a possible move to oust her before the Democratic convention in July — that he supports her, a move that was read within the DNC as a signal of the president’s backing.

On Wednesday, few congressional Democrats were willing to throw Wasserman Schultz under the bus on the record — and many were eager to change the conversation altogether, careful to avoid exacerbating the image of party strife.

New York's Chuck Schumer, a Clinton ally who is expected to ascend to the Senate Democratic leader role next year, declined to comment and said he wouldn’t be “mixing it up” on the issue. Patty Murray of Washington, the highest ranking woman in the Senate, said she’s “focused” on her own job when asked about the DNC. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada joined his fellow Clinton backers in sidestepping the matter, insisting “that’s not up to me” whether Wasserman Schultz should stay on.

“From my perspective, I just think the real harmony doesn’t come with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, it happens between Bernie and Hillary,” added Montana’s Jon Tester, who leads the Senate Democratic campaign arm. “It’s a DNC thing. I just really don’t pay attention to what she does, to be honest with you."

That kind of studied silence from Senate leaders, including some who are close to Clinton’s team, comes after a year of behind-the-scenes grumbling from various corners of the party over Wasserman Schultz’s oversight of the race. The frustrations were initially voiced by Sanders and then-candidate Martin O’Malley, who bristled over the party’s decision to schedule just six debates before the Clinton and Sanders camps came to an agreement to add more. More recently, Sanders supporters watched with dismay as the Vermont senator fought the chairwoman to gain more representation for his allies on the convention committees.

Publicly, the Clinton campaign continues to offer its measured support, even if many Clinton backers have been privately playing the “who replaces Debbie” parlor game for months with the expectation of a new chair falling into place at some point before the next president is inaugurated.

Clinton's press secretary Brian Fallon on Wednesday evening noted that the calls to replace the chairwoman had come from Sanders, not Clinton, but he stopped short of outright supporting her.

“From our viewpoint, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a very dedicated leader for our party. There is nobody more committed to her, nobody more committed than her, to making sure that Donald Trump is not the president in 2016 in November when we have the general election,” he said on CNN. “You've heard Bernie Sanders suggest that he would seek to remove her. We have not said that.”

Sanders has recently amped up his ire against Wasserman Schultz herself after months of railing against the establishment writ large. Over the weekend he endorsed and raised money for her congressional primary opponent, just days after she spoke out against Sanders' response to Nevada's chaotic Democratic convention earlier this month.

But his supporters declined Wednesday to fan the flames against Wasserman Schultz, who has served in her role since 2011, or to call outright for her departure.

“I don’t see it happening,” said Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, one of Sanders’ first Washington endorsers who nonetheless called Wasserman Schultz a friend, of an impending move. “At the end of the primary cycle there’s always a little combustion. It’s fine, it’s part of the Democratic process. I’m not sensing any great doom impending."

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Sanders supporter who co-chairs the House Progressive Caucus with Ellison, would only voice the standard criticism of the chairwoman — that she had put her finger on the scale for Clinton.

“It’s not her job to pick winners and losers. It’s her job to make sure the organization is tight and it supports Democrats, and the issue of the presidential race stays out of it,” said Grijalva. “That wasn’t the case. Everybody knows that. And people say the national party and the state party structures — which is dependent on the DNC — were not pro-Hillary. They’re not telling the truth."

Jane Sanders, the candidate’s wife, who serves as a top advisor on his campaign, met privately with Reid Wednesday morning in his office but declined to detail their conversation. When asked about Wasserman Schultz, she was blunt about her husband’s feelings: “I think he has said anything that we need to say."

Several congressional Democrats privately conceded they have heard talk about replacing Wasserman Schultz as a potential step for pulling Democrats together at some point down the road once Clinton officially clinches the nomination. If that scenario were to play out quickly, the party would avoid the kind of discord that might result from her playing a leading role at July’s convention in Philadelphia, where some Sanders supporters have already secured permits to demonstrate outside the convention hall.

But even partisans dissatisfied with the chairwoman’s role in the primary election acknowledged that it was never expected to be her role to unify the Sanders and Clinton camps, and they noted that she ultimately ceded ground on both the debate schedule and the makeup of the convention platform committee.

To try and remove her in the run-up to the convention would complicate an already delicate balancing act, especially since the chairwoman would be loath to go down without a bloody public fight, not least because she is facing a well-funded primary challenger who might find advantage in the furor. Some Democrats pointed to her response several years ago to speculation that she might be removed, when she lined up backers to suggest an ouster would be an anti-woman, anti-Semitic move.

And absent a change of heart in the White House, a maneuver to replace the chair would require a vote of the DNC membership, which likely could not come for at least another month — a significant disruption of party proceedings ahead of the convention as Clinton and Sanders work toward a detente.

The prospect of such unwelcome drama at such a crucial time makes any concrete steps toward unseating her “neither productive nor realistic,” in the words of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a close Clinton ally and potential running mate who was Wasserman Schultz’s predecessor at the DNC.

“I just think that sort of thing, two or three or four weeks before a national convention, would just be intolerable,” added Don Fowler, the DNC chair under Bill Clinton from 1995 to 1997.