Meet Debbie Wasserman Schultz's First-Ever Primary Challenger: Tim Canova

Debbie Wasserman Shultz
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Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the six-term congresswoman from South Florida and chair of the Democratic National Committee, has been embroiled in numerous significant controversies lately. As the Washington Post put it just today: "DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's list of enemies just keeps growing."

She is widely perceived to have breached her duty of neutrality as DNC chair by taking multiple steps to advance the Clinton campaign, including severely limiting the number of Democratic debates and scheduling them so as to ensure low viewership (she was co-chair of Clinton's 2008 campaign). Even her own DNC vice chairs have publicly excoriated her after she punished them for dissenting from her Hillary-protecting debate limitations. She recently told Ana Marie Cox in a New York Times interview that she favors ongoing criminalization of marijuana (as she receives large financial support from the alcohol industry). She denied opposing medical marijuana even though she was one of a handful of Democratic legislators to vote against a bill to allow states to legalize it, and in her interview with Cox, she boasted that her "criminal-justice record is perhaps not as progressive as some of my fellow progressives." She also excoriated "young women" -- who largely back Bernie Sanders rather than Clinton -- for "complacency" over reproductive rights.

In general, Wasserman Schultz is the living, breathing embodiment of everything rotted and corrupt about the Democratic Party: a corporatist who overwhelmingly relies on corporate money to keep her job, a hawk who supports the most bellicose aspects of U.S. foreign policy, a key member of the "centrist" and "moderate" pro-growth New Democrat coalition, a co-sponsor of the failed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was "heavily backed by D.C. favorites including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the music and motion picture industries" and which, if enacted, would have allowed extreme government and corporate control over the internet.

In 2012, at the height of the controversy over the "kill list" that the New York Times revealed Obama had compiled for execution by drone, she said in an interview she had never heard of it and mocked the interviewer for suggesting such a thing existed. In 2013, she demanded that Edward Snowden "be extradited, arrested, and prosecuted" because he supposedly "jeopardized millions of Americans" and then called him a "coward." "The progressive wing of the party base is volubly getting fed up with her," declared the American Prospect last week.

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