How could Chuck Schumer have been so reckless as to set up yet another public failure for his party? The answer, one suspects, lies just over his shoulder. Schumer is terrified that he’ll be challenged by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the decisions he’s making as majority leader reflect that fear.
Trouble is, what’s in Chuck Schumer’s best interests and what’s in the Democratic Party’s best interests do not always line up. The purpose of last night’s theater was for Schumer to say, “we tried.” But the costs of that “trying” were steep. “We tried” united the Republican party, while splitting the Democrats. “We tried” put a whole host of supposedly “moderate” senators — Kelly in Arizona, Ossoff in Georgia, Hassan in New Hampshire, Cortez-Masto in Nevada — on the record as arsonists. “We tried” weakened Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, and made Joe Manchin more annoyed than he already was. “We tried” reinforced the idea that the Democrats can’t get anything done — and, indeed, that there is bipartisan opposition to their ideas. Speaking to reporters this afternoon, Schumer described last night’s events as “exhilarating,” and I daresay they were. But so was the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Somewhere deep down, Chuck Schumer seems genuinely to believe that, however many times Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema choose to make themselves clear, they are destined to end up admitting that they like green eggs and ham after all. I cannot count the number of news stories I have read in the last six months that included both a confirmation that Schumer intended to steam ahead and sentences such as “despite Senator Manchin’s opposition” or “despite not having the votes” or “despite the exercise being destined ultimately to fail.” In Schumer’s imagination, Washington, D.C., seems to work like a scene in The West Wing, where well-written scripts outweigh hard political reality and mawkish emotional pressure is all that is needed to convince the recalcitrant. By the end of the today, I half-expect to see the man announce a second vote on last night’s bills to reiterate “where everyone stands.”
Still, bad as Schumer is as both a strategist and a messenger, it’s not clear that the Democrats have a better option at the moment. Dick Durbin seems affable, but is more politically extreme than Schumer. Elizabeth Warren is a nut. Bernie Sanders isn’t technically in the party. Dianne Feinstein is too old, and Alex Padilla is a lightweight. Sheldon Whitehouse is a conspiracy theorist. Cory Booker is a joke. Amy Klobuchar has an appalling temper. And the ones you haven’t heard of? Well, there’s a reason for that. The only figure that might make sense is Tim Kaine, but he suffers from the same lack of strategic restraint as does Chuck Schumer, which would bring us back to square one.
Much as they’d hate to admit it, the Democrats would benefit immensely from having their own Mitch McConnell. But they don’t — and it shows.