Oops, you almost have to feel sorry for Chuck Schumer, who is facing another unambiguous failure. Like a wounded wildebeest, his colleagues are outfoxing him, blaming Sen. Schumer for not holding Democrats together.
From Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA):
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
From Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA).
“Chuck Schumer has not met this moment, and Senate Democrats would be wise to move on from his leadership.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who is challenging Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) for his seat in Congress’s upper chamber:
“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership.”
“If @ChuckSchumer were an effective leader,” argued Moulton, “he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), possibly the next Democratic standard-bearer, didn’t mention Schumer. Instead, Newsome called the deal “pathetic” and characterized it as “surrender.”
Bad News Getting Worse
Issac Schorr writes in Spectator of another unambiguous failure on Schummer’s part.
The deal that his colleagues went around him to negotiate failed to extract the key concession that Democrats had professed to be holding out for: an extension of what were originally meant to be short-term Obamacare subsidies.
Instead, their defectors settled for an agreement to force the(Trump) administration to rehire the federal workers it let go during the shutdown, as well as a promise that Republicans will hold a vote on the subsidies after the government is reopened.
Topping this, the aging New Yorker desperately wanted to appease the Democratic base. Schumer is so vulnerable to a potential primary challenge from progressive heartthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that he must look to her now as a wounded wildebeest does to a hungry lion.
Should Rep. Ocasio-Cortez decide to run for the Senate instead of the White House in 2028, she would be the favorite in a race against Schumer.. A survey conducted by Data for Progress, showed AOC with a 19-point lead over Schumer. A different poll conducted in May gave her a 21-point advantage.
Schumer’s predicament is not necessarily one of his own making, notes Schorr. The Democrat party itself has been careening leftward since Donald Trump won the presidency. Chuck Schumer, writes Schorr, has just been trying to keep up. Demands of ideological conformity or no-holds-barred tactics have been ill-advised. Schumer has made a career of his lack of principle. His compliance has allowed him to remain in the spotlight. Consider, if you will, Shumer’s flexibility and his ill-fated call last year for the toppling of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Will Schumer give up or forcibly be removed? Attribute his fate not only to his shortcomings as a political talent, “but also his habitual appeasement of the progressives who revile him.”
