On the menu today: A temporary respite from me pointing out the flaws in our Ukraine policy to focus on the Democratic fury at Chuck Schumer and the party’s difficulties adjusting to the hard realities of the second Trump term. Last night at a National Review event, a prominent retired Republican elected official was asked what he thought Schumer ought to do, in the face of buzz that he’ll be challenged by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Retire to Florida,” was the answer.
Everybody Hates Chuck
If you’re not a fan of Chuck Schumer, this is the greatest week ever.
The 74-year-old Schumer is the embodiment of old school New York Democrats, the longest-serving senator from his state — longer than Aaron Burr, Jacob Javits, or Daniel Patrick Moynihan. For most of the past two decades, Schumer seemed like one of those symbols of New York that would never go away, much like rats, cockroaches, and an exorbitant cost of living.
But seemingly overnight, almost everybody in the Democratic Party is rhetorically whacking Schumer around like a piñata — Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Walz, and blue-district House Democrats you’ve probably never heard of. Some senior House Democrat told Axios that Schumer’s popularity among congressional Democrats is “hovering somewhere between Elon Musk and the Ebola virus.” And contrary to the popular slogan of anyone getting criticized in public life, taking flak doesn’t necessarily mean he’s over the target.
Democrats are raging at Schumer because he’s got a weak hand, not because he played the hand he was dealt particularly badly.
Had Schumer encouraged Democrats to filibuster the recent spending bill, he and his party would have effectively accepted responsibility for shutting down the government and sent a lot of federal workers home with delayed paychecks . . . and then after a few days or weeks, they probably would have been forced to accept the same deal. Trump certainly wasn’t going to feel any pressure to reopen the government; in late 2018 and early 2019, Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, 35 days. If anything, Trump is even more confident and combative now.
Schumer is a Senate minority leader with little leverage — 47 votes on a good day, and Jon Ossoff is hemmed in by having to run for reelection in Georgia. Sure, Schumer still has the filibuster — yes, the same filibuster he spent years trying to eliminate, and that Democrats denounced as the “Jim Crow filibuster” — but he can’t use that tool for reconciliation.
No, what really bedevils Democrats is that Republicans in the House of Representatives — all 218 of them, although they’ll likely add two more Republicans on April 2 and then bid farewell to Elise Stefanik — have somehow figured out a way to pull together and pass legislation. This delicate coalition could fall apart at any moment, but at least for the past few months, when President Trump jumps on social media and says, “I want you guys to pass this,” they pull together and pass it. (In Democrats’ defense, based upon the recent history of House Republicans, unity, strong leadership, and effective strategy is an absolute surprise attack that no one would have predicted.)
Then again, Schumer is not exactly a whirling dervish of raw political charisma, and the moment it became clear that Kamala Harris wasn’t going to win any of the swing states, Schumer ascended to the leader of the opposition by default. He’s probably not the right guy; to use one of my favorite metaphors, he’s not a “wartime consigliere.”
Leadership of Senate Democrats has been on autopilot for nearly a decade. Schumer was unanimously elected by his caucus in 2016, and this week marks the first serious talk about someone else leading the caucus. I think many Democrats would acknowledge that the last eight years have not been great for their party.
That House Democrat who you’ve probably never heard of is Representative Glenn Ivey, who represents Maryland’s Fourth District, the eastern suburbs surrounding the District of Columbia. It is the wealthiest black-majority district in the country and home to an estimated 47,000 federal government workers, more than 12 percent of the total employment in the district.
“I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he had a great, long-standing career,” Ivey told an audience that included many government workers Tuesday night. “But I’m afraid that it may be time for the Senate Democrats to get a new leader.”
Notice that reference to Schumer’s “long-standing career.” I suspect a Democratic Party that had to avert its eyes from the effects of age on Joe Biden for at least four years has a lot of pent-up anger at geriatrics who hang on to leadership positions long after they’ve lost a step.
The Senate Democratic Caucus doesn’t look entirely like a retirement home, but a lot of the party’s leaders in that chamber are fairly long in the tooth. The current whip is 80-year-old Dick Durbin of Illinois. Conference vice chair Warren turns 76 in June. Fellow vice chair Mark Warner is 70. The Senate Democratic Outreach chair is . . . er, 83-year-old Bernie Sanders.
The median age of Senate Democrats is 66 years old. It’s not surprising that Senate Democrats are always promising that they’ll never let Social Security benefits get reduced . . . because a whole bunch of them are already collecting it. They generally oppose the burning of fossil fuels because they’re not that far away from becoming it.
After the 2024 election, on some edition of The Editors podcast, I predicted that the Democratic nominee in 2028 would not be a moderating force but would instead be someone who echoed Howard Dean’s declaration, “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” It’s not that this is the wisest approach or the one most likely to guarantee victory in 2028, it’s just that Democrats believe they’re entitled to run the country in a manner something akin to the Divine Right of Kings. They’re the party of government! They’re the smartest! They’re the most caring! In the eyes of Democrats, the Trump era is just a Dagwood sandwich of layer upon layer of outrage and injustice. The 2026 midterms may get Democrats the House, but regaining control of the Senate is getting harder and harder.
At some point today at the National Review Ideas Summit, I’m going to be asked who the 2028 presidential nominees are going to be. On the Republican side, it’s clear, at least for now; it’s JD Vance’s nomination until he has a falling out with Trump, or someone else comes along and takes the nomination away from him.
On the Democratic side, it’s a more wide-open field, but I would point out a series of articles in the mainstream media in recent month . . .
Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic, December 12, 2024:
A week after Donald Trump won the presidency again, I sat across from Chris Murphy in his minimalist but well-appointed D.C. office. The Connecticut senator sounded like a man who had done a speedrun through all five stages of grief and was ready to talk about what comes next: how his party could learn from its loss and win over — or win back — voters in 2026 and 2028. “I have thought for a long time that there’s a race between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party,” Murphy told me. “And the question is: Does the Republican Party become more economically populist in a genuine way before the Democratic Party opens itself up to people who don’t agree with us on 100 percent of our social and cultural issues?” . . .
Murphy is doing his best to make sure that his side of the aisle beats the Republicans, but he seems far from certain that it will. In an MSNBC interview after the election, the senator sketched out something of a road map for Democrats: “We should return to the party we were in the ’70s and ’80s, when we had economics as the tent pole and then we let in people who thought differently than us on other social and cultural issues.” Murphy was quick to add that this reinvention — or rather, reversion — will be challenging to pull off. “That’s a difficult thing for the Democratic Party to do, because we’ve applied a lot of litmus tests over the years,” he observed. “Those litmus tests have added up to a party that is pretty exclusionary and is shrinking, not growing.”
The New York Times, February 23: “Chris Murphy Emerges as a Clear Voice for Democrats Countering Trump.”
NBC News, March 3: “‘We have become the party of the status quo’: Chris Murphy makes his case to lead Democrats forward.”
Perry Bacon Jr.’s column in the Washington Post, March 17:
At the start of Trump’s second term, Senate Democrats, led by Schumer, seemed desperate to show that they were not too partisan and would work with the new administration when possible. Not Murphy. Within weeks of Trump’s inauguration, the Connecticut senator, not previously known as a liberal firebrand, was using terms such as “red alert” and “constitutional crisis.” . . .
We need Democrats fighting Trump hard — whatever their motives. If Murphy helps address this crisis of democracy now, I’ll be thrilled to reward him with my vote in the future.
I get it, right now Chris Murphy looks and sounds like a Temu brand Gavin Newsom. (At age 51, he’s a baby among his Senate colleagues.) But articles like the ones above don’t just happen. They’re the result of a coordinated effort to pitch Murphy as The Next Big Thing, and a sign that Murphy desperately wants to be perceived as a leader in his party right now. Now, good press coverage can only get you so far; ask Beto O’Rourke. But if you’re a lesser-known Democratic senator and want to be in the 2028 discussion, coverage like this is a prerequisite.
Finally, for a man who says he’s not running for anything other than possibly a third term as governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz is maintaining a pretty high national media profile, isn’t he?
If you’re a Democrat frustrated by the 2024 election, this is an extremely ominous sign. Because whatever it takes to win a presidential election, it’s painfully clear that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz don’t have it.
Running around boasting that you check on Tesla’s stock price when you need a pick-me up, as Walz recently did, might make liberal audiences feel good, but it’s the embodiment of insufferably smug liberalism, rooting for an American company making electric cars to fail because you disagree with the politics of the owner.
A decade ago, the environmentalist progressives were the ones buying Teslas! Now to stick it to Elon Musk, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly touted the fact that he traded in his Tesla and bought . . . a gasoline-powered Chevy Tahoe SUV. That vehicle gets anywhere from 14 to 21 miles per gallon in the city, depending upon the model. No, there is no electric Chevy Tahoe.
It turns out electric cars run on a dual-power system of batteries and the approval of your liberal neighbors. If you take one away, the car just can’t be driven anywhere. I’ve heard they can have trouble in low temperatures, but it turns out it can be disabled by a cold stare from the “In This House, We Believe” yard-sign-owning lady next door.
ADDENDUM: If you’re attending the National Review Ideas Summit, I’ll see you today. If not . . . circle your calendar for sometime in late winter or early spring 2027!