2016 Postmortem

“John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman — and a former top adviser to Barack Obama — broached the idea of replacing Wasserman Schultz as early as last fall, only to be rebuffed by the president’s team, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversation.

“It came down to the fact that the president didn’t want the hassle of getting rid of Debbie,” said a former top Obama adviser. “It’s been a huge problem for the Clintons, but the president just didn’t want the headache of Debbie bad-mouthing him. ... It was a huge pain in the ass.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-226100

“By 2014, the critics, still mostly anonymous, had formed a more substantial critique: More than three dozen Democrats, almost all of them still anonymous, told Politico that Wasserman Schultz was more concerned with her political ambitions than she was with the good of the party. The story was loaded with the kind of devastating anecdotes reminiscent of Republican staffers’ griping over Sarah Palin following John McCain’s loss in 2008. Former DNC officials claimed that on more than one occasion — for both the 2012 Democratic convention and Obama’s second-term inauguration in 2013 — Wasserman Schultz tried to get the party to pay for her clothes, requiring intervention from Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. And Obama loyalists complained she was using meetings with DNC donors to try to pressure them into donating to her leadership super-pac. Her working relationship with the president seemed icy at best: When Wasserman Schultz joined a photo-op line at a Democratic fundraiser in an attempt to get face time with the president, he reportedly turned to her and said, “You need another picture, Debbie?”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/everyone-hates-debbie-wasserman-schultz.html