Are Shutdown Chuck's days numbered in Senate leadership? Color me skeptical -- but not because Chuck Schumer can claim sterling strategic acumen or a list of any significant accomplishments. It's more of an après moi, le deluge issue.
Rep. Ro Khanna, infuriated over the predictable collapse of the Schumer Shutdown, kept the Chuck You ball rolling this weekend. Yesterday, he told Kristin Welker on NBC's Meet the Press that he had lost confidence in Schumer's leadership, even though Schumer runs the Democrat caucus in the other chamber of Congress. Khanna makes it clear that the shutdown isn't the only issue that has undermined "confidence" in Schumer, and that he wants someone who will push the party toward a more radical direction (transcript via NBC and Andrew Malcolm):
Rep. Ro Khanna: "Do you think Democrats around the country think that Chuck Schumer should be the face of the future of the Democratic Party? Of course not."
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WELKER: Why do you think Leader Schumer is to blame, given that Republicans have control, as Jeanne Shaheen is saying, of the White House and both chambers of Congress?
KHANNA: Well, there`s something that I agree with both of these senators. Senator Kaine said that Senator Schumer was terrific under President Biden. And he was. I worked with him on the CHIPS and Science Act. That would not have passed if it weren`t for Senator Schumer`s leadership. Same with the infrastructure bill and IRA.
And Senator Shaheen is right that the biggest culprit is Donald Trump and Mike Johnson. The question is what is the future of Democratic leadership -- who is going to be effective? And most Democrats around the country just don`t think that person is Chuck Schumer. I mean, he doesn`t inspire confidence. He`s not bold. He`s out of touch with the grassroots. He`s someone who cheer-led us into the war in Iraq. He doesn`t have the moral clarity on Gaza. He couldn`t say Mamdani`s name. And this was the final straw where he was not strong on fighting for health care.
Khanna then offered up his roster of potential replacements:
WELKER: So, who is the person who you think should lead Democrats into the future in the Senate? Who`s at the top of that list for you, Congressman?
KHANNA: Well, Senator Kaine`s already given me a hard time for just saying that the minority leader should be someone different. I think if I endorsed someone it would probably hurt them more than help them. But we have dynamic young, new leaders --
WELKER: Who are some of the top names --
KHANNA: Chris Murphy is a top leader. Cory Booker is a dynamic leader. Brian Schatz is a dynamic leader. I mean, Elizabeth Warren is someone whose ideology I appreciate. There are a lot of great talent -- and really, is Chuck Schumer -- when you think about it, just from a common-sense test, do you think Democrats around the country think that Chuck Schumer should be the face of the future of the Democratic Party? Of course not.
"Elizabeth Warren is someone whose ideology I appreciate" may be the most self-disqualifying statement for a politician arguing for a claim to the mainstream I've ever heard. Including the 76-year-old crank in a roster of "dynamic, young, new leaders" might qualify for the silver medal.
All of this is just whistling in the wind, TIME Magazine' Philip Elliott informs his readers in their DC Brief. Sure, Khanna and other Democrats are taking shots at Shutdown Chuck, but it's mainly performative. Schumer won't get pushed out of leadership, and largely because Democrats got a ringside seat to that kind of debacle when House Republicans tried it:
For his part, Schumer has professed indifference to the discontent and he had pretty good reasoning: no one who wants him gone has the power to make it happen, and no one who could do it is publicly calling for him to go. Even privately, there is little sign that Senate Democrats expect to replace Schumer before the midterm elections, according to just about every Capitol insider with a grudge and an insight. It’s pretty easy to hold onto a job when no one else is ready to step into it.
Thus is the life of a Minority Leader: all stumbles and fumbles and bumbles are of his making, all victories the work of others. The job is thankless even under the best conditions, and these are far from those. And it’s why those who are positioning themselves to potentially follow in Schumer’s shoes aren’t pressing for the position at this very moment when he seems so vulnerable. Much like House Republicans struggled in the recent past to nominate a Speaker not named Kevin McCarthy, being frustrated with the top dog is not sufficient for putting him down until there’s a new Alpha.
Of course, Elliott then runs down the roster of replacements, which turns out to mostly duplicate Khanna's. One notable exception is Catherine Cortez Masto, who is notably even further from Khanna than Schumer. She voted all along to end the filibuster and helped arrange the Kabuki-theater collapse of the shutdown. There seems almost no chance that the Democrats would dump Schumer to hand the reins to (a) someone who torpedoed the shutdown, and (b) has to keep her seat in a purple-to-red state. Khanna wants more Mamdanis, not more Fettermans.
Elliott hits the mark better in the earlier excerpt. Pushing Schumer out only forces the brewing internecine war on the Left to become fully acute. Don't forget that the faction Khanna represents pushed Schumer into this shutdown strategy after intimidating him in March when he eschewed it as pointless. Schumer might have the strategic thinking of a 4th-grader playing checkers, but he wasn't entirely responsible for this fiasco. Even the sympathy some 'moderates' might have for Schumer is secondary to the unease some will feel at letting the inmates fully run the asylum, and certainly at the fight it would create just as the party is heading into the midterms.
Schumer's not going anywhere until 2028. The idea that he'd step aside for AOC or anyone else at that point seems mainly speculative, too. He's actually a year younger than Warren, and turns 75 next week -- practically middle aged for the Senate. Patty Murray -- on Elliott's list, if not Khanna's -- also just turned 75 during the shutdown. Schumer doesn't have any place to go after three decades in Congress, and AOC has plenty of time to get into the AARP Club on Capitol Hill.
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points. They own this.
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