John Heilemann is out with a fantastic piece today on The Great Divide Over Debates inside of the Democratic National Committee. And by fantastic, I mean that it's a complete invention of terrible, terrible internecine battles in the minds of Those Who Don't Think Too Much.
An insurrection at the DNC! Because debates.
Now, to be sure, there is disagreement about how many debates are enough debates. Tulsi Gabbard, that warmongering Republican in her magical Democrat cloak claims she was disinvited from this week's debate by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz because she criticized the DNC and called for more debates.
The horror! The headlines! DEMS IN DISARRAY, Heilemann claims.
The DNC and Wasserman Schultz insist Gabbard wasn’t disinvited. But they admit that she was asked to “refocus” her message and stop talking about “process,” with the strong suggestion that if she couldn’t do those things, she should reconsider attending the debate. “She chose not to come because I guess she can’t,” Wasserman Schultz said on Tuesday in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.
That interview was part of an escalating back-and-forth on cable, in which the broadsides issued by the combatants grew increasingly blunt and harsh—with Gabbard introducing the issue of how the debate plan was determined. “The chairwoman said publicly that she had communicated and consulted with vice chairs and officers of the DNC prior to making her decision,” Gabbard told Mitchell. “The fact is, there was no communication. There was no consultation with the vice chairs and officers, of which I am one. So it’s unfortunate that she continues to say things that aren’t true.”
I am no great fan of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. I'd be fine if she stepped down as DNC chair and let someone like Jennifer Granholm step in. But let's be realistic, here. A disagreement about the number of debates is nothing like driving out the Speaker of the House while threatening to push the nation toward debt default and a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood, am I right?
Yet that is exactly what Heillemann is doing with this article. See? It's BOTH SIDES. BOTH SIDES have division, BOTH SIDES are in disarray.
Says the Democrat with close ties to the committee: “The next chair is going to have to burn the place down and rebuild it.”
See how that works?
The Democrats demonstrated that they're all adults, capable of focusing on issues facing us all, so it is now incumbent on the likes of Heilemann, et al to see to it we're distracted from that.
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