Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s toadying for Hillary has her own party steaming

“My concern is that not enough people will see the Democrats, while on the other side of the aisle, they’re putting on the Greatest Show on Earth”, Kozikowski of the Association of State Democratic Chairs tells me. But she said the party encourages candidates to engage with voters in other ways and take part in various “forums” around the country – as long as they aren’t formal debates.

“You have Democrats beginning to panic about the one thing that a lot of them never anxious about, which was Clinton’s electability in the general election”, said Robert Shrum, a former senior adviser to Gore and Kerry during their presidential runs, the Times reported.

The “extremism” of Donald Trump, she said, is “basically holding a mirror up to the Republican Party of today”, with some of his competitors rushing to join him on issues such as immigration.

“The decision to limit Presidential candidates to six debates, with a threat of exclusion for any candidate who participates in any non-DNC sanctioned debate, is a mistake”, Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Rybak said.

As Democratic Leader of the New Hampshire House and a state senator after that, I learned that debates serve the local party in critical ways.

But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, is not budging.

One key argument for more debates making the rounds among Dems is that the current schedule may result in too few Dem primary voters tuning in, at exactly the moment when it would be most useful for Democrats to be drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans.

The number of debates has been slashed from 25 in 2008 to a mere handful. “The candidates will be uninvited from subsequent debates if they accept an invitation to anything outside of the six sanctioned debates”. O’Malley allies have accused the DNC of limiting debates to aid fellow candidate Hillary Clinton.

Wasserman Schultz first refused to answer the question during an interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews at the end of July. She has lost favor of the Obama administration since her appointment as chair of the DNC in 2011, with reports that replacements had been lined up after the 2012 presidential election. The amendment fell 2.4 percentage points shy of the 60 percent it needed to pass. Morgan, who bankrolled the initiative to put the amendment to a vote and former donor to Ms. Wasserman Schultz, subsequently began a political campaign against her in retaliation to her opposition and the narrow defeat of the amendment.

The two are asking the DNC for “several more debates” and to scrap the proposed sanctions against candidates who choose to participate in non-DNC sanctioned debates.

Noting she was the first Jewish congresswoman ever from Florida, Wasserman Schultz called it a “deeply personal issue”.

Mrs. Wasserman Schultz said there had been all kinds of wild speculation about who she was trying to help.

A former Republican and independent governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee announced his bid for the Democratic nomination on June 3.