Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) is confident that her party is going to keep control of the Senate.
“I agree with the vice president,” she told CNN yesterday of Joe Biden’s prediction.
The reason is “twofold,” the chairwoman said. “We have — going into Election Day — a superior ground game that’s run circles around the Republicans. We have more absentee ballots, 25,000 more absentee ballots requested in Iowa and more returned in Iowa. We have almost 50 percent of the early vote in North Carolina, is Democrats, to 32 percent for the Republicans,” Wasserman Schultz said.
“We really significantly increased our early vote turnout here in Florida over our 2010 turnout. And this was a razor-thin election four years ago. Charlie Crist will be elected the first Democratic governor in the 21st century in Florida because the bottom line is voters are going to the polls the last few weeks and tomorrow asking themselves one question, who has my back, who cares about the issues that matter the most to me, making sure I can reach the middle class and fighting for me to be able to succeed and Republicans who have taken us backwards.”
Wasserman Schultz said Republicans will be hurt at the polls by being “obstructionists over and over again.”
“And Ted Cruz just today doubled down on that obstruction and promised that if for some strange reason they do take the majority, that he’s going to push as hard as he can to make sure that just like the obstruction in the House, that the Senate digs in and does as much to block the president and stop him from making progress as they could,” she said.
The Texas senator has not given his support, should the GOP win the Senate, to presumptive Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Wasserman Schultz said that despite senatorial candidates not eager for President Obama to lend them a hand, “the president really is our best asset. He’s our best [get out the vote] motivator, our best fundraiser.”
“Look, I’ll stack up our surrogates against Republican surrogates any day,” she said. “We’ve got President Obama and Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton, President Clinton, and they’ve got Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and Rand Paul. So, we’re in pretty good shape in terms of who’s been deployed to stump for our candidates.”
The chairwoman said women are “turning out and overwhelmingly supporting our Democratic candidates like Mark Udall, like Bruce Braley” for a reason.
“I mean, the gap between Republicans and Democrats with women is huge not only because we’ve supported women’s right to make their own health care choices instead f of their bosses or politicians, but also because we support equal pay for equal work and the Republicans have blocked it at every turn,” Wasserman Schultz continued. “And we support an increase in minimum wage and Republicans don’t and have blocked it every turn.”
“So, the pocketbook, bread-and-butter middle class issues that voters are going to be deciding these elections on are what is going to drive our success tomorrow. And at the end of the day, that is the question that will turn on for every single voter. They want to make sure that they’ve got elected officials all across this country — and I’m on the ballot tomorrow, too — I know what I hear from my constituents is that they want us to work together. They want us to focus on jobs and the economy.”
What voters “don’t want,” Wasserman Schultz asserted, “is a Republican majority in the Senate that would double down on suing the president for doing his job or shutting the government down like Ted Cruz led the fight to do it a year ago which cost our economy $24 billion.”
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