Just how fast and how far could Debbie Wasserman-Schultz fall from power? After being booed off the stage by her own Florida delegation and then having to slink away without even banging the gavel at the convention, a new round of media speculation has begun over her fate back in her own district. Could she actually lose the primary to Tim Canova? Since she was considered pretty much Teflon in that district until only recently it would be a shocking development indeed, but the cavalcade of bad news for her coming out of Philadelphia may just move this race into the competitive category with barely a month to go. (Fox News)
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz had been poised to easily win a seventh House term in November – until she crossed paths with Bernie Sanders, resulting in a cascade of criticism and embarrassments that now includes an email expose that could upend her reelection bid.
Even after Wasserman Shultz announced her abrupt resignation on the eve of the Democratic convention kick-off, the Florida congresswoman faces a mounting political headache back home.
Her next hurdle will be Democratic primary challenger Tim Canova, who has been playing up the fallout at the DNC after leaked emails revealed an apparent anti-Bernie Sanders bias inside the soon-to-be-ex chairwoman’s shop.
We already saw news of Canova moving into a fundraising advantage even before the DNC email leaks hit the press and now he’s hitting her hard on Twitter over the perception of scandal and wrongdoing.
DWS must be defeated in this election and removed from Congress. It’s time to end her political career for good: https://t.co/AaEFqMwENH
— Tim Canova (@Tim_Canova) July 25, 2016
If he’s smart, Canova won’t be hitting his opponent so much on her failure to operate a fair primary process, but rather on the idea which Sanders supporters are still up in arms about. The establishment is rigging the system and you can’t get ahead unless you’re in good with the party elders. It’s the year of the outsider and those emails should be all the proof that the challenger needs to highlight Debbie as the poster child of the abuse inherent in the system.
So will that be enough to do the trick? Even for all of the background information above, color me skeptical. It still takes a lot of leverage to move a boulder and Wasserman-Schultz is an institution in the party. Her loss of influence on the national level won’t help her cause any, but I’m not sure the voters who sent her to Congress a half dozen times before will be ready to bail out on her over this.
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