Debs isn’t having a cake walk this election year.
Via Sun Sentinel:
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Friday that she did nothing wrong as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, but resigned to avoid becoming a distraction as Hillary Clinton was about to become the party’s presidential nominee.
Despite the critical verdicts delivered by cable TV talking heads, supporters of defeated presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and her own congressional primary opponent in South Florida, Wasserman Schultz said she ran the national party in a strictly neutral manner as the two presidential candidates battled through the primary season.
“I stepped aside because at the end of the day we had emails that were stolen, stolen by Russian spies, and that really whipped so many into a frenzy that it became a distraction. … Who the DNC chair was could not be the focus of that Democratic National Convention. It had to be about Hilary Clinton, about our Democratic nominee, and it was important for me to step aside,” she said during an interview with the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and reporters.
“It’s also important for me to acknowledge the buck stops with me. Any head of an organization has to make sure that they are holding themselves accountable,” Wasserman Schultz said.
The Weston congresswoman said no person or organization would emerge untarnished if all of their internal emails were published online — which is what happened to the Democratic Party when almost 20,000 of its hacked emails were posted by WikiLeaks. “Would they sustain and withstand the bright, white hot spotlight? Probably not.”
Wasserman Schultz said there’s a lesson for everyone. “This is a new world that we’re living in. Anything that you put out into the ether, into the online community, could become public,” she said. “It’s too easy to hit that send button and think that there’s not going to be an impact.
Wasserman Schultz, who is the first Jewish congresswoman elected from Florida, condemned the email from a senior party staffer who discussed whether it would be effective in southern states to publicize Sanders’ Jewish faith or to suggest he is an atheist. “I condemn that. I certainly apologize as the head of the organization, and that individual is no longer working for the DNC.”
The DNC emails emails included communications showing that party staffers preferred Clinton over Sanders. For months, Sanders and his supporters complained that the nominating process was rigged, an allegation Wasserman Schultz has denied for months and repeated on Friday.
“We ran — I ran — a Democratic primary nominating contest that was by the book, according to the Democratic National Committee rules, according to our state primary and caucus rules, and it resulted in an outcome that was absolutely by the book,” she said.