It seems like only yesterday when we were debating whether or not NY Senator Chuck Schumer would face any sort of retribution from the White House and the Democratic leadership if he opposed the Iran deal. (Oh, wait… it wasn’t yesterday. It was this morning.) As the saying goes, that didn’t take long. The Democrats under Obama’s sway are coming out swinging and suggesting that Chuck might find a better use of his time than handling the party leadership in the Senate. (WaPo)

White House allies angrily struck back after Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced his opposition to President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal late Thursday, suggesting Schumer could lose support as Democratic leader in the Senate in 2016 if he helps block the accord.

The forceful response from some of Obama’s former top-ranking aides was the latest example of the president’s take-no-prisoners approach to ensuring the survival of a pact that he views as a historic, legacy-defining achievement that could help remake the security situation in the turbulent Middle East…

“Senator Schumer siding with the GOP against Obama, [Hillary] Clinton and most Democrats will make it hard for him to lead the Dems in ’16,” Dan Pfeiffer, who served as Obama’s senior political adviser until leaving in February, wrote on Twitter. “The base won’t support a leader who thought Obamacare was a mistake and wants War with Iran.”

In case it doesn’t go without saying at this point, Schumer is one of “my” senators from New York. He’s a power broker in his party with a long history of endangering the lives of anyone standing between him and a cable news camera. But on the issue of Israel and US relations in the Middle East, he’s at least been consistent. That’s won him a lot of friends in the Big Apple and even in the more rural, western sections of the state. His popularity at home is such that he really has nothing to worry about in terms of losing his seat to a Republican or even being seriously challenged in a primary. (If that needs to be hammered home, in 2010 he beat Jay Townsend by a margin of 67-33. The guy sleeps well at night.)

Barack Obama and the rest of the party leadership can’t threaten him on that front. But what they can do is mount an attack which could keep Schumer from rising any higher and taking the place of Harry Reid. (There are more than a few rumors that Elizabeth Warren would like that spot herself.) But what was Schumer supposed to do? This is one of the rare cases where I won’t even ascribe it to politics. I think Schumer is really a dedicated patron of his Jewish constituents and a faithful friend of Israel. And he thinks this deal is bad for both Israel and America.

Who comes out on top in this battle? That depends largely on the 2016 Democrat primary and who winds up running the party in DC. And if Schumer doesn’t end up as the Senate Minority Leader, I wouldn’t be shocked if he begins preparing for an exit… stage Left.