The government shutdown ended with a whimper, and on this week’s first edition of The Editors, Rich and Co. discuss Chuck Schumer’s major role in, and bad handling of, the entire ordeal.
“The stone-cold loser here,” Rich says, “is clearly Chuck Schumer. And as I believe Jim Geraghty pointed out at the time, he was hanged in effigy all around the country by progressives.”
Noah points out, “It’s a trap of Chuck Schumer’s own making. . . . You don’t get what you want from a government shutdown, ever. . . . Chuck Schumer inculcated in his constituencies and his members this magical thinking that ‘if we were just recalcitrant enough, we could get everything we wanted.'” But “there was no strategy involved here, and Chuck Schumer engaging in this without an exit plan was always gonna be a disaster for him. So I have very little sympathy. He did this to himself.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.