While she may at one point have been a “real Democrat,” Debbie Wasserman Schultz has increasingly grown out of touch with the people.
She has been catering more to donors than to voters.
The most recent example of this was her use of her position as Democratic National Committee chairwoman to set the debate schedule in a way that is deliberately favorable to Hillary Clinton.
Wasserman Schultz hasn’t always been so quick to cater to the establishment, or “The System,” as we call it here at UF. During her time at UF, she ran against the Blue Key party to become president of the Student Senate and ultimately won that seat.
She’s spoken about being an independent candidate at UF and not being a part of the system.
However, since leaving UF, she seems to have forgotten that.
While it’s not necessarily a bad thing to want to work within a system to change it, that is not what Wasserman Schultz is doing.
Instead, she’s working within the system, against the poor.
While the fight between the establishment and an “outsider” candidate plays out at the national level with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, a similar race is happening in South Florida for Wasserman Schultz’s seat.
This election cycle, Wasserman Schultz has a challenger, Tim Canova, who is a law professor at Nova Southeastern University and once advised Sanders.
Canova similarly fought the Democratic Party for voter data files, which are not given to those who are challenging incumbents.
He won the right to see voter data, though only for himself and not as a policy change.
Instead of calling for Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, Canova became her first primary challenger, calling out how Wasserman Schultz’s voting record aligns more with what her corporate donors want than what the voters from her area want.
Like Clinton, on the surface Wasserman Schultz appears to truly believe in liberal policy, but when you delve deeper into her record, that’s not the case.
Wasserman Schultz’s establishment tactics just won’t cut it anymore.
Even though she’s only received $68,000 from payday lenders, according to PolitiFact, this seems to inform her stance on payday lending.
Also according to PolitiFact, “Wasserman Schultz is among Florida lawmakers who have defended Florida’s payday law despite the fact that some consumer advocates have bashed it and say it traps the poor in a debt cycle.”
Essentially, as the poor take out loans they must pay them back with interest from their next paychecks, feeding into a cycle where they are never able to free themselves of debt.
Instead of fighting for the poor, Wasserman Schultz contributes to the cycle of poverty and upholds business as usual. While there are regulations in place already, they are often not properly enforced.
Not only is this a class issue, but it’s also a race issue. According to a Vice article titled “Inside the Battle over Florida’s Racially Charged Payday Loan Racket,” the majority of payday loan locations in major Florida cities are in African-American and Latino communities.
The very essence of being a Democrat is supposed to be fighting for poor and marginalized communities, but that isn’t what Wasserman Schultz does.
This presidential season, Wasserman Schultz has been unable to be impartial, continually working debates in Clinton’s favor until she was called out on it.
While the DNC is supposed to be impartial in the primaries, it is far from it.
It’s still unclear if ousting her as DNC chairwoman will solve anything, since she will probably be replaced by just another establishment shill, but voting her out of office could be a start to actually helping the poor and marginalized.
Nicole Dan is a UF political science sophomore. Her column appears on Mondays.
