Trashing Schumer is Wrong on the Merits and Is Self-Indulgent in the Extreme
Schumer Is Unlikeable, Condescending, And Bad For The Democrats
Senator Chuck Schumer did the anti-Trump majority in the United States a huge favor last week, but everyone who should be applauding him is instead trashing him for it. Choose your metaphor: Did he stop the left from committing a huge self-own? Did he prevent an unforced error? Did he step in to help his party avoid a self-inflicted wound? No matter what one calls it, Schumer acted responsibly and stopped the anti-Trump opposition from creating the worst kind of unintended consequence: giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk even greater unchecked power. Someone needs to thank that man.
But it seems that no one is willing to do so, even his own longtime centrist allies, much less the progressive left (of which I am, more often that not, an enthusiastic part) or the NeverTrump right. Everyone, it seems, is united in condemning Schumer for "caving," and even though Schumer has carefully explained his reasoning over and over again, the response is: But you need to do something. The three quotes at the top of this column are from a lefty lawyer/YouTuber, a lefty stand-up political comedian, and whatever Anthony Scaramucci is. There are countless other criticisms out there, but those three (which I came across in only the last day) capture the vibe.
Interestingly, even MSNBC's Chris Hayes has gotten in on the act, even though he made a notably apt comment in a different context (the Middle East tragedy) over a year ago, explaining the flawed syllogism at play: "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, it must be done." But now he has gone all in, or as he put it on his show last night: "Now is the time to break glass." Even when it is time to break the glass, however, we should not grab a shard and gouge out our own eyes with it. One would think that this was obvious.
OK, we need to back up a bit. In "Schumer Was (Unfortunately) Right, But Either Way, the Infighting Must Stop," published on Verdict yesterday, I explained that Schumer had absolutely made the correct call regarding a big vote on a government funding bill (this one in the form of a "continuing resolution," or CR). I can summarize my point quite simply: Especially for the people -- very much including me -- who are accusing Trump of lawlessness, blocking that CR would have made matters immeasurably worse by taking away, you know, the law. Without a CR, there is no spending law for Trump to carry out or, if he refuses to do so, for the courts to adjudicate. No CR, no accountability.
What the throngs of anti-Schumer critics seem to want is for the Democrats in the Senate to have "stood firm," refusing to go along with what everyone (Schumer very much included) understands was a bad CR that was written by House Republicans without any input from Democrats. We should all want to prevent a terrible bill from becoming law, but what if the alternative is even worse? According to Schumer's critics, he should have led his Senate colleagues to refuse to provide the necessary votes to reach the 60-vote threshold, thus showing that Democrats are united against Trump. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead ... into that rocky cliff ten feet in front of us.
That is (and Schumer was very clear about this before and after the vote), killing the (terrible) CR would have led to a government shutdown. And unlike other government shutdowns, which politicians in both parties have always tried to end quickly, this shutdown would have been a gift to the Musk-Trump team, because they would want nothing more than to be bestowed with the power to shut down the government and refuse to sign any laws to reopen it. Even if they did eventually relent, the world during a shutdown would have been a playground for them. Yet the anti-Trump forces -- who claim to be worried about government workers being fired -- would have had Schumer give Trump the ability to furlough some workers without pay (and with no end date in sight) while forcing other government workers to work without pay.
In my Verdict column, I noted that Schumer had been on Hayes's show last week and had explained his position over and over again. Hayes was polite but deeply skeptical and pushed hard, but he never in fact found any fault with Schumer's analysis. Again, it was all just, "But things are bad! Why aren't you doing something?"
Schumer returned to Hayes's show two nights ago, and the interview was again polite but confrontational (bordering at times on combative on Hayes's part). There are three points in particular where Hayes's almost willful confusion was most visible, which I will quote at length here:
(at the 5:19 mark) "But here's to me my understanding of the critique that's broader than the specifics here, which is about the level and depth of crisis we're in, and the appropriate tactics to meet that. So I think what people think is, first of all, we all know that the Senate functions on unanimous consent. That's how anything happens. We watched real pains in the butt -- Tommy Tuberville, basically bring the place to a halt, just denying unanimous consent because he was mad the Department of Defense might somewhere pay for an abortion, right? The idea that of how cataclysmic that shutdown, I hear what you're saying, but what I'm hearing from people -- and there's a lot of 'em -- is right now, a crisis is happening unlike anything the republic has faced maybe since even the Civil War. Most Americans don't quite grasp it, and it's your job, as the most powerful Democrat, to use whatever tactics you have to communicate that. And by going along with this, you have missed this opportunity to tell the nation just how bad it is.
Schumer tried to state the obvious, which is that "whatever tactics you have to communicate" the depth of the crisis should not deepen the crisis, but Hayes cut him off and jumped in again:
(at the 6:36 mark) Doesn't the crisis create the attentional vortex that is necessary -- because right now people have no idea that they're gonna basically get rid of all American universities and all of American science funding. ... There's nothing like a crisis to drive that home.
Schumer gave an example of hospital funding that would go away during a shutdown and pointed out that kids would literally die because of that, and he said that he simply could not allow that to happen. Hayes was undeterred, however:
(at the 8:20 mark) The question is, OK, these people [Republicans] won't negotiate. This was the one opportunity of leverage because of the need for filibusteral-proof [sic] majority. ... What people hear is, "We're gonna lie in the cut until they self-destruct." Like, what's the plan?!
What leverage? Again, this is nothing more than sophistry: "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, it must be done."
Even so, I certainly understand why people opposed to Trump feel that something needs to be done. But making things worse without a plan for what happens after the Democrats have given Musk-Trump even more power is not leadership. I have been trying to imagine what Schumer's critics are imagining would have happened if the CR had gone down. Do they think that they would all stand around shouting, "Finally, we stood up to the bully! We did something. Yay us." And then the public would suddenly open its eyes and see that things are very bad right now, and it is Trump's fault? Why would the public think that, when Democrats would have only moments before passed up the only remaining possibility of limiting the Republicans' power grab?
Hayes is hardly the only person who is flummoxed by the fact that Democrats have virtually no institutional power. In current circumstances, Democrats and others who oppose Trump are left with little more than symbolic gestures. But when they do engage in those symbolic gestures, even sympathetic pundits and late-night comedians mock them for not doing anything "real."
For example, after the State of the Union address two weeks ago, Stephen Colbert mocked some Democratic women for wearing fuchsia clothing. He then showed Democrats' silent protest of holding up paddles with slogans like "False," "Musk Steals," and "Save Medicaid," and then he snarked: "That was very cool, Democrats. In fact, I made my own sign." He then held up a paddle saying: "Try doing something."
What would he have them do? Those symbolic gestures of course were not substantive -- which is what makes them symbolic -- but at least they did not give Trump more power! It is like Jon Stewart's weirdly split personality, in which he alternately yells at Democrats to Play Hardball but then scolds them for actually using power when they have it.
Unlike the MAGA crowd, the left undermines itself by belittling Democrats in office for not exercising the power that they no longer hold. But it is not only the comedians and online commentators who do this. During Hayes's interview with Schumer on Tuesday, he showed a few quotes from Schumer's fellow Democrats Hakeem Jeffries, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and even Nancy Pelosi.
But all of them were spouting nonsense. Shapiro, for example, said that "when Chuck Schumer had leverage here," he needed to "force the Republicans to meet him halfway." That is beyond silly, however, because the Democrats never had any leverage, as Schumer pointed out again and again. "If you don't give me what I want, I'm going to make you even more powerful" is not leverage.
Pelosi even said this: "I myself don't give away anything for nothing." To go back more than a decade, that is like the Republicans who complained about Barack Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal. When asked what they (including John McCain) would have done differently, they merely responded, "We would have gotten something better." Oh, better. Good idea! But Pelosi's snide remark was even more ridiculous, because what Schumer "gave away" was the Democrats' ability to make things even worse than they already are.
As I emphasized in my Verdict column, I have never been a Schumer fan, but credit is due. Not only did he do the right thing in this case. He also did so by finding just enough votes among his colleagues to avoid disaster and then went out and took the heat on himself rather than spreading the pain around. He never, for example, said, "Well, gosh, I'm not the only Democrat who voted for the CR." He was a leader, and once he had enough votes, he did not twist anyone else's arms to vote with him, allowing the rest of the party to distance themselves from him.
Bernie Sanders knows better. Elizabeth Warren most certainly knows better. AOC is so busy talking about "betrayal" that I am not sure whether she knows better. But Schumer gave them all the latitude to heap the blame on him. Notably, he did not force anyone (including Hayes) to own the direct implications of their supposedly strategic backseat driving. Schumer could have said something like this:
Chris, I get the difference between liberal and radical, and you're saying that we have to make things much worse in order to make things better. What you're not telling me is how killing kids in hospitals is going to make things better, or how giving Trump the ability to do whatever he wants without even having the letter of the law to stand in his way will make things better. You seem to be having fun telling me that I have "missed the moment," but in that moment and in all of the moments of wailing since then, not one of you has explained how voting for a shutdown and giving Musk completely unfettered power would have made things better, even in the long run.
Schumer did not say any of that. He sat and patiently responded to criticism after criticism, never losing his cool even as he was being repeatedly interrupted and while people are calling for his head. Are the Democrats worse off politically now than they were a week ago? Maybe, but if so, it is surely because they are engaged in a public bloodletting of their only leader who was willing to see beyond the empty "Why don't you do something?" sloganeering.
In his "Now is the time to break the glass" commentary last night, Hayes was reacting to the end of Tuesday's interview, when he pushed Schumer over the idea that the country is already "there," that is, in a constitutional crisis, while Schumer responded correctly that we are not quite there (even as he readily conceded that Trump 2025 is not Trump 2017). They both agreed that unprecedented action is required in a crisis, but even if Hayes is right that we are already completely there, blocking the CR would not have been the way to fight back. Some actions are unprecedented because they are stupid.
Are there ways to fight back? Mostly, no. Elections have consequences, and these consequences are cataclysmic. But yelling at Democrats -- and Democrats yelling at each other -- while telling them that they should have harmed Americans in order to get the people on their side speeds past boldness and hardball straight into naked nihilism.
Rather than continuing to criticize their compatriots, the people who oppose Musk-Trump need to understand that their remaining options are limited and that they need to support one another rather than tearing each other down. And as I pointed out in yesterday's Verdict column, that would be true even if Schumer had been completely wrong about that CR. Which he was not.