Leadership Without Power: Some Promising Developments
"Democrats, disaffected (and purged) Republicans, and independents will get their feet under them as time goes by, so the current hand-wringing about the Democrats’ supposedly being adrift is ... inevitable but also will not be the story going forward." Or so I wrote only six weeks ago on Verdict, in "More Reasons to be Guardedly Optimistic," the second of two February columns in which I described "the inevitable end of Trumpism." Until last week, however, my prediction that Democrats' hand-wringing would soon end was looking particularly wrongheaded. And then things changed, at least a bit.
Last week's big political stories involving Democrats included welcome news regarding the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which turned out to be a romp by the liberal candidate. That result was deservedly celebrated (especially because it was an "utter humiliation" of Elon Musk), and it was one of the few political situations in 2025 in which the Republicans do not hold all of the cards. Where Democrats or voters still have power, it is good to see them put it to good use. Indeed, that is where we should expect the action to happen for the foreseeable future, because there are still plenty of things that Democratic-run state governments can do, and elections will come along that are not locked down by Republicans' decades-long strategy of suppressing votes.
By contrast, Democrats in Washington have no power. Numbers are numbers, and Republican majorities of 220-213 in the House and 53-47 in the Senate are a fact of life. But to my surprise, one major piece of DC-based news was arguably the more impressive and inspiring story last week, most definitely because it involved an act that ex ante had no reason to be successful. Yet Senator Cory Booker's marathon speech -- which was all the more delicious because it saw a Black US Senator break the previous record, which had been set by the infamous segregationist Strom Thurmond's attempt to stop an early civil rights bill in 1957 -- is what truly set people's hearts beating.
Twenty-five-plus hours of impassioned oratory had absolutely no immediate practical effect, but mainstream news outlets were using words like "ignites" and "energizes" to describe the speech's impact on Democrats and others. As if any further proof were needed that my skill set does not include the ability to predict the political impact of public events, I imagined going into the speech that Booker would either be ignored or mocked. Predictably, Republicans went straight to that well, but the genuine surprise was that Booker's allies avoided the temptation to prove how jaded they can be by undercutting him.
To be clear, I am not at all saying that Booker deserved to be dismissed or ridiculed. I am saying only that I would have bet quite a large sum of money on Democrats and cynical pundits going after him. This was especially on my mind because of Booker's much-mocked "Spartacus moment" in 2018 during the Kavanaugh hearings, which Republicans roasted and Democrats refused to defend. That Democrats stood together this time is a reason for good feelings and perhaps even some optimism.
What does worry me, however, is that the "Schumer blew it" insta-reaction from three weeks ago now seems to have become fully encrusted as full-blown conventional wisdom. Given the blur of events, I should remind readers that I am referring to the freakout among Democrats and others after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led a small group of colleagues to cast unpopular votes to allow Republicans to pass a six-month spending bill (called a Continuing Resolution, or CR). As I explained in a Verdict column and two followups (here and here) on Dorf on Law, Schumer exhibited true leadership by not allowing the non-Trump world's desperate need to "stand up to Trump" to lead to a government shutdown.
Schumer correctly explained (again and again and again) that as bad as the CR is -- and it is horrible -- the alternative was worse. Yet far too many people who should know better, from the MSNBC evening pundits to plenty of Democrats in the House and Senate to people on the street, acted as if Schumer had done something unforgivable.
I like to use movie references where possible, and the best analogy I can come up with here is the scene in 1978's (highly problematic) "Animal House," when the farcical ending (essentially a riot breaking out during a college's homecoming parade) is set off by this conversation in the titular fraternity house:
Eric Stratton: We got to take these bastards. We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years... cost millions of lives. In this case... I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires... a really futile and stupid gesture ... be done on somebody's part.
John Blutarsky: We're just the guys to do it.
If anything, what Stratton describes is better than what people wanted Schumer to do, because the Deltas end up doing little more than a few thousand dollars worth of damage while getting the last laugh on a villainous dean and a rival fraternity. Had Schumer gone along with what is now the conventional wisdom, the damage would have been tragic, handing nonreviewable power to the Musk-Trump team's ongoing constitutional assault while putting even more people out of work and taking even more food out of the mouths of hungry people.
I have been following this story quite closely, and to this day no one has even attempted to argue that a shutdown would not have been a bigger disaster. When Schumer appeared for an interview on Stephen Colbert's show ten days ago, for example, Colbert's version of pressing the Senator was simply to read a short list of bad things that are in the CR. Again, that is not what this is about. The Democrats never had leverage to improve the CR, so they were left with two choices: CR (bad) or shutdown (much worse).
As I acknowledged in my Dorf on Law followups, however, I do understand that people are looking for some oomph from Democratic leaders, and Schumer is the anti-oomph. He cannot even get people to listen to him when he has hands-down the better of the argument on the CR vote. And this means that people continue to misuse his leadership on that crucial vote as their primary (but false) example of a more general (and true) "but he's uninspiring" critique.
For example, a guest op-ed in The New York Times by the former the editorials editor of The Los Angeles Times two weeks ago included this:
Mr. Schumer recently argued in a Times Opinion guest essay that his decision to vote for the spending bill was the better of only bad options. Give him credit for offering an explanation. But to many, his decision reflects a way of doing business that doesn’t meet the moment.
After I read that paragraph, I wrote a note to myself: "So what, pray tell, would 'meet the moment'?" No one, certainly not that editorialist, has ever explained. More to the point, framing this merely as "a way of doing business" makes it sound as if an honest assessment of what options remained for a party with 47 votes in a 100-seat chamber, followed by a very difficult choice to do something unpopular but humane, was mere business as usual. It was anything but.
Even so, that op-ed's final sentence has its merits: "It would be edifying to see Mr. Schumer set an example for his party and for the nation by stepping down and making way for new leadership instead of clinging to power." I continue to believe that it would be particularly ironic for Schumer to be taken down for doing the one truly brave thing that I have seen him do in his entire career, but politicians frequently do not have the luxury of choosing their exit strategies. It might indeed be time for him to step aside for someone who does not come across as someone's sweet great uncle.
Where does Booker's speech fit into this? Again, I am stunned that his speech (which, to repeat, was a Hail Mary that could have been dismissed as a mere stunt) hit exactly the right note at exactly the right time. He was not engaged in "a really futile and stupid gesture," but it might indeed be accurately described as futile, at least from one perspective. Thank goodness it was not taken that way.
It is important to be clear, however, that all of the impact of Booker's speech has been symbolic -- symbolic in the best sense, but symbolic nonetheless. It did not improve the CR. It did not prevent RFK Jr. from cutting 10,000 health-related federal jobs. It did not prevent people from being renditioned to what amounts to a work camp. It did not cause the Supreme Court to crack down on Trump's lawlessness.
What Senator Booker did do, however, is inspire and unite people who were desperate for anything to rally around. So long as people understand that he did not achieve anything concrete, we hopefully will not soon see people again saying that "the Democrats need to learn how to fight," after they notice that things are just a dire as they were a week ago, if not more so.
Keeping up people's spirits when the world is going to hell is not easy. Schumer avoided the mistake of making a show of defiance for its own self-defeating sake, which would have made matters much worse. His decision should not have further deflated the mood in the anti-Trump world, yet it did. Booker did nothing more nor less than inspire. And it turns out that a lot of people wanted to feel inspired, even more than to be told that their leaders had minimized substantive damage. Personally, I am grateful for the services that both senators provided in the last few weeks.
--Neil H. Buchanan