March 19, 2025 | Reading Time: 4 minutes
Schumer and the Democrats still take their own for granted
The party could prove otherwise by ousting him, but won’t.
It’s important you understand that the controversy over US Senator Chuck Schumer’s continued leadership of the Senate Democrats is not an ordinary “family feud,” or a narrative about the establishment versus “the left,” or some media fiction about “Democrats in disarray.”
In leading eight other Senate Democrats to voting last week in favor of the GOP funding bill, Schumer cemented the already deep public impression that the Democrats will collapse under pressure and that the party of “kitchen-table issues” can’t be trusted to implement them, even if it has an opportunity to, because it’s too spineless and weak.
While it’s true that liberals tend to be like cats, and that herding them tends to be virtually impossible, the problem facing the Democrats isn’t one of ideology or interest. It’s one of fighting spirit and whether their leaders possess it. It’s one of showing the American people, especially Democratic voters, that the Democrats have what it takes to resist and countervail the tyranny of a criminal president.
As Garrett Graff said: “In effectively a single blink of the historical eye, we’ve seen our entire constitutional system simply … stop. We can clearly see what’s happening is wrong — illegal and unconstitutional — and the actors who can do something about that just … aren’t.”
This is why this whole thing is more than “Democrats in disarray.” (If it were, I wouldn’t be talking about it for the fifth time.) What would it take to demonstrate that the Democrats are strong and that they can be relied on to act when the moment for action arrives? Given that they are the party out of power, the only thing they can do now is get their house in order, which is to say, hold themselves accountable.
That means getting rid of Schumer as leader.
The man can’t be trusted. This is clear for reasons beyond last week’s vote. Last night, during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, in which he defended his vote, he pushed primary responsibility for the defense of democracy and the rule of law onto the American people.
If Trump disobeys the US Supreme Court, Schumer said, “there will be a strong and immediate reaction from one end of the country to the other in ways that we have never seen before. … It’s not just up to us. The people will have to rise up. … Our democracy will be at stake then. … If the people make their voices heard, and stand up, and we join them, I believe we can try to beat that back, we can beat that back.”
This is the same belief in the inherent goodness of the American people that made it possible, after the 2020 election, for some elite Democrats to wave away critics who demanded that then-US Attorney General Merrick Garland immediately hold accountable every single elected Republican involved in the J6 insurrection, including Donald Trump.
This belief in the inherent goodness of the American people made it possible to accept the argument that the Biden administration didn’t need to risk alienating swing voters by pursuing justice, but instead could beat the next GOP nominee with appeals to economic policies.
If the last election taught us anything, it’s that the American people cannot altogether tell the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit, but here’s a Democratic leader telling us not only that the American people will recognize tyranny when they see but also that his party will join them in fighting it after they have seen it for themselves. What they need is leadership, but there isn’t any among the Democrats.
The most obvious reason Schumer can’t be trusted?
He still trusts the Republicans.
In their new book, Times reporters Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater said that in the summer of 2023, Schumer told them over glasses of wine that after the election, “when the Republican party expels the turd of Donald Trump, it will go back to being the old Republican party.”
If there’s a way to blame Trump for the GOP’s problems, Schumer will find it before blaming the GOP itself. As Jeet Heer said last week, he explained to the Times that his strategy “is to wait until Trump’s approval rating goes under 40 percent, which will create a new political environment where Senate Republicans will turn on Trump.”
The Republicans will never turn on Trump, no matter how unpopular he becomes. Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans, as well as swing voters, will not necessarily turn to the Democrats for solutions to the problems his administration creates, not when there’s a national consensus that the Democrats are soft, and not when there’s always a third-party scammer waiting to take advantage of the alienated.
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What can be trusted about Schumer?
His weakness is provocative.
“Multiple senior GOP sources in both chambers on the Hill and within the Trump administration were quick to blab to Rolling Stone about how thrilled they were at Schumer’s willingness to cave — because they now believe they can get away with the same tactics in the next funding showdown and exclude Democrats from the process.”
If only this were a story about “Democrats in disarray.”
If that were the case, there would be a competitive faction inside the party that understands the immediate need to demonstrate lasting accountability. (It’s not enough to keep saying, over and over, that we gotta do better. Heads must roll!) It would understand the immediate need to demonstrate strength and courage for the purpose of winning back public trust, especially the trust of rank-and-file Democrats.
That’s not the case, because the Democrats – and I mean all of them, not just Chuck Schumer – continue to take the base of the party for granted. They assume, as they did when they forced Joe Biden out of the running, that the base will go along with whatever they decide, even if that decision means caving to Republicans without getting anything in return, except the shattered faith of the Democratic base.
The Democrats take the base for granted because, unlike the Republicans, they do not fear it. Because they do not, it’s unlikely that they will hold Schumer responsible for his backstabbing. Indeed, top Democrats will tacitly approve of his strategy of waiting and waiting and waiting for the Republicans to turn on Trump, sacrificing their power in the mistaken belief that they will be rewarded for it, all the while wondering why normie Democrats are increasingly awol.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. Find him @editorialboard.bsky.social
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