It’s been quite a fortnight for Sen. Chuck Schumer. He was riding high as the leader of the Democratic opposition to the MAGA takeover of the U.S. government … until one choice led to him being reviled by colleagues and his party.
On March 13, the minority leader of the U.S. Senate announced he’d vote to advance the Republican funding bill just 24 hours after he said he wouldn’t. The bill, which kills $13 billion in non-defense spending while spiking defense spending by $6 billion, could have been a bargaining chip that would have allowed Democrats leverage despite being in the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Schumer said Donald Trump and Elon Musk would have run amok if the government had shut down. Democrats, both elected and rank-and-file, were furious and thought he folded with an ace and a king before the Republicans even placed a bet.
Since then, Schumer has been facing calls to resign, while the Democrats are facing a come-to-Jesus moment over the direction they’ve gone since Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election. Through all this, Republicans take shots of Jagermeister in celebration.
Schumer, to his credit, can read the room. He’s postponing his planned book tour, the Baltimore Beat says, amid the backlash against him. But the backlash represents a larger issue within the Democratic party: Where are the wins? Where’s the fighting spirit? And is the current leadership too weak for the Trump era?
Author and journalist Ta-Nehesi Coates discussed this with former MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid and at least expressed what people are most worried about: “You’ve lost affirmative action. You’ve lost a woman’s right to choose. Labor is under siege. Public schools are, you know, effectively taken as playgrounds for the private. You lost campaign finance reform. You lost the Supreme Court. You may lose Obamacare, which itself was a conservative compromise. What did this get? What did you win?” Coates asked.
But there’s other criticism out there of Democrats and what’s perceived as their failure to meet the moment, giving Republicans control of the political narrative and the MAGA movement control of the nation’s fate. On The Electorette podcast, host Jenn Taylor-Skinner and Start Me Up podcast host Kimberley Johnson talked about this point, praising former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi for her work during the first Trump administration, being as effective publicly as she was in the backroom dealings needed to keep her caucus united, in contrast with Schumer.
Even Charlemagne Tha God, speaking on his show “The Breakfast Club” on New York’s Power 105.1 (WWPR-FM) called for Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to step out of their leadership positions because of their failure to craft a strong enough message to counter Republican aggression. “They will always and forever continue to have a messaging problem because the Democrats have a leadership problem,” he said, “ and it’s time for the Chuck Schumers of the world, the Hakeem Jeffries’ of the world to step down, go away. We need people in those positions willing to fight.”
Taylor-Skinner has also weighed in on how voters are thinking differently about Jeffries in particular.
“Before he took this spot as the majority leader, I would’ve expected him to behave differently. He’s not AOC, he’s never been AOC, he’s not Jasmine Crockett,” she said. “Has he changed or have our expectations of him changed? … Maybe both are true and the moment requires him to change with it,” she said.
Charlamagne called for the leadership of the party to be primaried because they are not showing much willingness to push back. However, he also hosted Rep. Al Green on another edition of the show who agreed that Democrats need to show more backbone. But he also said something that most people probably don’t realize is why Republicans are so effective: they bet big to win big, even if they lose everything in the next hand.
“When we do get 218 votes we’ve got to decide we’ll have enough courage to do what has to be done even if we won’t have 218 votes after that,” Green explained.
Meanwhile, the town halls continue and people are shouting at the top of their lungs at both Republicans and Democrats who seem either to have no power to disrupt Trump’s anti-everybody agenda, or to be an active part of it.
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