Democrats revolt against Chuck Schumer’s cave to Republicans

On Friday, the Senate voted to advance a stopgap spending bill, essentially averting a government shutdown.

But the conclusion of the vote now opens up questions about the future of Chuck Schumer’s status as the top Democrat in the Senate after he threw Democrats for a loop by announcing late on Thursday evening that he would join with Republicans to support the bill, known as a continuing resolution, to keep the government open.

The way Schumer went about his decision surprised people as much as his actual words. Throughout Thursday, especially after the Democratic luncheon, more Democrats stated their opposition to the continuing resolution that House Republicans had passed on an almost exclusively party line.

Then, almost as soon as the opposition floodgates began to open, Schumer unprompted, made a speech on the floor saying he would vote for the continuing resolution. That immediately prompted outrage from House Democrats of all stripes. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a “tremendous mistake” on CNN.

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Schumer’s announcement did little to quell the opposition to the bill as even swing-state Democrats like Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan came out and opposed it.

“If I weren’t a preacher, I’d tell you what kind of ‘no’” Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia told The Independent. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a part of Schumer’s leadership team, also opposed it.

But perhaps the most damning part came when the triumvirate of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Whip Katherine Clark and Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar left the House Democratic retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, to hold a press conference.

Throughout the conference, when reporters asked Jeffries if he still had confidence of his fellow Brooklynite Schumer, he deflected, saying “next question.”

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Most Democratic senators refused to say whether this should prompt a change in Democratic leadership, with Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona flat-out saying “I don't agree with that.”

But Democratic activists made their anger clear.

Leah Greenberg, the co-founder of the progressive organization Indivisible, told The Independent over text that she was “swamped by angry calls from leaders across the country who feel betrayed.”

“I would say that our people are uniform in strongly disagreeing with and feeling betrayed by his strategic call, but even people who actually agree on the ultimate outcome are horrified by how this has been managed,” she said.

To be clear, Democrats had zero good choices here. A government shutdown would have given Donald Trump and Elon Musk license to slash even more.

As much as House leadership said they wanted Republicans to come back to the table and negotiate a bipartisan appropriations bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have no incentive to reopen the government. Plenty of their members might even like a shutdown.

But Democratic activists find themselves increasingly angry and they want to see their elected officials fight back.

“I haven’t heard from anyone who isn’t disgusted,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, told The Independent. “We cannot win this way. The problem is that now no matter what he does, he looks weak. It’s a colossal self-own.”

In addition, Watts said that any Democratic leader who “fails to meet the moment” should face a primary challenge.

Schumer has navigated the minefield of being the top Democrat in the Trump era for the eight years. He’s done so with a special level of pluck and affability.

When Democrats held the Senate during Joe Biden’s presidency with only 50 votes, he managed to keep everyone from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin on the same page, which allowed him to pass consequential legislation. He did so largely by calling senators on his flip phone and raising large sums of money.

He’s a master retail politician who regularly traverses his home state of New York beyond the Big Apple to Upstate, which is how he wins over people who voted for Trump in his elections.

But Democrats in the Senate and their voters have interpreted his geniality as being too conciliatory. In a time when Democratic voters want to see their party put up a fight against Trump and actively resist him, that makes being the leader in a deliberative body like the Senate much more difficult.

Whether Schumer stays on as leader, he will have shown he was unable to make the case to his caucus that he had made right choice. And now those calls on his flip phone might include some voice messages telling him to step aside.