Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer looks like a dead man walking these days — and for good reason.
Even though he voted against the modified continuing resolution to reopen the government after a 41-day shutdown, numerous House Democrats and many Democratic advocates want the 74-year-old Brooklynite to step aside.
Schumer had decided to take a stand on trying to force Republicans to attach an extension of Covid-era enhanced tax credits to the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace.
It seemed like the easiest fight for Schumer to pick. After all, voters tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans when it comes to health care. And Republicans have never been able to come up with an alternative to the law, commonly known as Obamacare, and even Donald Trump said he only had “concepts of a plan.”
This came after Schumer seemed to learn the political consequences after he voted for a Republican stopgap spending bill back in March, which caused many Democrats in the House and Senate to rebuke him, especially those in the progressive flank. That led some Democrats to call on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run against him in 2028.
Republicans such as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance have pointed to the looming AOC threat as a reason Schumer instigated the current shutdown fight.
But over the weekend, Schumer lost control of the narrative, and his caucus, when a handful of rogue Democrats broke off and agreed to keep the government open until January with the promise from Republicans of a vote on the tax credits in December. To add to the humiliation, his own whip, retiring Sen. Dick Durbin, joined the effort.
It would likely always end this way, especially when Trump began threatening to kill the filibuster, pass voter identification and get rid of mail-in voting. That didn’t soften the blow. Now he once again faces calls to either step aside as leader while others once again float an AOC challenge.
And it was just the latest installment of Schumer’s greatest flaws since he became the top Democrat in the Senate: an inability to manage expectations about what Democrats could achieve and a stunning level of naiveté about the will and political skills of Republicans.
The original sin of the entire cockamamie fight about the shutdown lies at a core problem: Even if Schumer found 13 Republicans to support keeping the tax credits, House Speaker Mike Johnson seemed opposed to doing so in principle.
Republicans began to spin the subsidies as health care for immigrants who came to the United States illegally, even though federal law prohibits federal dollars from going to undocumented immigrants, though some states use the money. Trump joined in on the fun by making racist AI videos with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a Mexican sombrero.
But Schumer somehow believed that Republicans would make a deal, or at least he broadcasted it in response to The Independent during a gaggle with reporters at the beginning of a shutdown.
“We’re insisting that the negotiations not just be between Democratic senators, Republican senators, or between [Majority Leader John] Thune and myself. It has to include Johnson and Hakeem, because you need two houses to pass anything,” Schumer said.
That exhibits a stunning level of obliviousness, but it should not suprise anyone. When Schumer voted for the continuing resolution in March, he said House Republicans would restore funding they cut for the city of Washington, DC’s budget. But the vote never came in the House even after it passed the Senate.
Schumer never communicated to voters and activists that this would be near impossible and how Trump showed almost no interest in fixing the problem.
This goes to Schumer’s other fatal flaw: a failure to manage expectations. In 2020, Schumer invested heavily in flipping Senate seats in Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado and Maine. In the end, Susan Collins stunned everyone by winning in a state Joe Biden had won, and Democrats only flipped Colorado and Arizona.
After Biden won, Schumer’s best chance to flip the Senate came in the two Senate seats in Georgia, which led him to say, “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world.”
But Schumer failed to level with Democrats that a caucus of 50 Senate seats also included conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who were cautious about multi-trillion dollar spending initiatives and removing the filibuster to pass legislation on voting rights or to codify abortion protections.
That led to Democrats becoming deeply disappointed when Build Back Better died or Democrats could not codify protections in Roe v Wade in light of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision.
As the top Democratic official in the upper chamber, Schumer has significant power. But it still has his limits. He had the ability to filibuster legislation, but not to pass bills in the minority. He could cut deals with Republicans, but cannot force the House to vote on legislation, and certainly cannot force Trump to sign it.
His refusal to level with what is possible when Democrats control literally no level of government set his voters up for disappointment. His desire to make himself look powerful left him appearing impotent. His attempt to look like he’s negotiating in good faith made him look like a mark. And he has nobody to blame but himself.
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