Chuck Schumer Is Not Our Right-Hand Man
He’ll never take an all-out stand.
Chuck Schumer has led Democrats to a demoralizing defeat against Donald Trump and President Un-Elect Elon Musk. House Democrats might’ve held the line against the GOP’s democracy-shredding funding bill, but it didn’t matter once Schumer and nine other losers surrendered. They broadcast to the nation the true extent of any actual “resistance” to Trump’s criminal presidency.
It reminds me of a story I saw on the news when I was a kid: This guy was stupid enough to climb into the lion enclosure at the zoo. The lion didn’t immediately kill him. He sort of patted him on the head first with his paw, testing to see if he was actually real and the kill was going to be this easy.
Trump is patting Schumer on the head right now, but Schumer still doesn’t realize he’s served himself up on a platter. He told CNN that it took “strength and courage” for him to help pass the continuing resolution that gives Trump everything he wanted and Democrats absolutely nothing, not even a delicious doorstop. (Watch below.)
It’s bad enough we have an insane president who wants to conquer Canada, but the Democratic Senate leader is a self-deluded chump. The combination is not good for the country.
If Schumer had a shred a dignity, he’d have changed his name, grown a handlebar mustache, and fled the country by now. Instead, he sat down for a self-aggrandizing interview with The New York Times, where he appeared even more clueless and useless. This passage doesn’t tell us anything new, but it reinforces that Schumer is incapable of learning anything from the past 10 years. He’s a political Sisyphus with a traumatic brain injury.
The last time he was president, which is the closest experience we have with him — and admittedly, the world has changed some, particularly on the media side, how it works — we kept pushing and pushing and pushing and chipping away. And when he went below 40 percent in the polls, the Republican legislators started working with us. He was at 51. He’s now at 48. We’re gonna keep at it until he goes below 40. Look, I talk to a lot of these Republican legislators. I’ve worked with them. Some of them are Trump devotees. But many of them don’t like him, don’t respect him and worry about what he’s doing to our country. Right now he’s so popular they can’t resist him. I mean, so many of them came to me and said: “I don’t think Hegseth should be defense secretary or R.F.K. should be H.H.S. But Trump wants him. He won.” The Republicans would like to have some freedom from Trump, but they won’t until we bring him down in popularity. That happened with Bush in 2005. It happened with Trump in 2017. When it happens, I am hopeful that our Republican colleagues will resume working with us. And I talk to them. One of the places is in the gym. When you’re on that bike in your shorts, panting away next to a Republican, a lot of the inhibitions come off.
The entire interview is infuriating. Schumer doesn’t realize that his Republican buddies at the restricted Senate country club are just glad-handing him. Maybe he’d consider them a more serious threat if they were student protesters.
It’s not even clear what Schumer means when he suggests that Democrats effectively brought down Trump’s popularity in 2017. A dying John McCain’s vote saved the Affordable Care Act. That had nothing to do with Schumer. Republicans meanwhile willingly supported Trump’s agenda. They helped pack the courts with right-wing zealots and laughed in Schumer’s face as they advanced Amy Coney Barrett’s drive-through confirmation to the Supreme Court. Trump’s popularity was at its lowest after he incited an attack on the Capitol, and Republicans still didn’t work with Democrats to convict him in the Senate. Most of the Republicans who did support his impeachment are no longer in Congress.
The Republican Party right now consists of appeasers and outright traitors. Who cares if they admitted the obvious, that Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are both unfit for their jobs, while sweating to the oldies with Schumer? All that matters is what they do right now. Letting Trump and Musk destroy the country while waiting passively for voters to turn on them is not leadership. That’s not how Republicans got Joe Biden below 40 percent approval. They schemed. They plotted. They crafted a narrative. Democrats don’t even have to lie about what’s happening.
The fine art of surrender
The 10 Democrats who voted for the continuing resolution are Chuck Schumer, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Brian Schatz, Dick Durbin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Gary Peters, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and Angus King (and independent who caucuses with Democrats). This is an especially cowardly lot because they either represent safely Democratic states or they aren’t up for re-election for a while. Peters and Shaheen are retiring, and King and Durbin are both 80. Schumer is 74 and won’t face voters until 2028. He has little to lose, but he was apparently afraid that Republicans would him for a “Schumer Shutdown.”
Defending his vote, Fetterman posted on social media: “My YES vote is *not* an endorsement of this deeply flawed CR. My YES vote is 💯 about refusing to shut our government down. I refuse to punish working families and plunge millions of Americans into chaos. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever vote to shut our government down.”
This is a bunch of nonsense. The only reason to vote for a bad bill is because you support it or received a jet ski. Fetterman now fully owns the damage from the continuing resolution, and he’s proudly declared to anyone listening that he’ll always fold if Republicans hold the government or the nation’s debt hostage. As the people’s Democratic leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded, “Cool so what happens if GOP attach a national abortion ban to a CR? You’ll vote for that too?”
Fetterman openly opposed progressive calls for a cease fire in the Israel-Gaza war. He said, “I fully support [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] idea that he can never allow a permanent ceasefire [if] Hamas is allowed to be functional … That’s my red line on that. I could never support Israel being bullied into an artificial kind of permanent ceasefire against an enemy like Hamas.”
Yet, Fetterman was easily bullied into backing a deal that surrenders congressional powers to Trump and Musk. Fetterman has no problem blaming Hamas for the mounting loss of innocent life in Gaza. It’s not difficult to blame Republicans and Musk for any chaos and pain from a government shutdown, especially because it’s true. He simply refused to try. He gave up.
So did every other Senate Democrat, despite the misleading social media posts. They voted against the bill but still provided unanimous consent to move forward.
I saw Hamilton again last weekend, and as usual, the audience went wild when George Washington entered and declared, “We are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, out-planned. We’re gotta make an all-out stand.” (Watch below.)
The musical (and U.S. history) would’ve taken a darker turn if Washington had said, “We are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, out-planned, so let’s hide under our beds and hope that our British friends will eventually get tired of King George’s tyranny.”
American democracy is facing overwhelming odds against a relentless force, but that’s nothing new. If Democrats expect voters to turn out for them in future elections, they need to rise up, but Schumer and Fetterman are spinning their pathetic cowardice as noble pragmatism.
“A shutdown will allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” Schumer keeps saying, as if trying to convince himself. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate.”
Schumer insists that Trump actually wanted a shutdown. This is the song of the truly desperate. Trump doesn’t play three-dimensional chess. He could barely get through a game of checkers without eating the pieces. Since Schumer caved, Trump has done nothing but gloat. His maniacal laughter makes me question the wisdom of Schumer’s actions.
Democratic voters are looking for leaders who don’t just accept two bad options. We want leaders who find or flat-out create a better third option. When the Daleks have captured the Doctor’s companion, Rose, and threatens to kill her if he interferes with their plans, he says simply, “No.” They are stunned. Why won’t he back down? He has no weapons and no defenses. It doesn’t matter. The Doctor insists he will rescue Rose, save the Earth, and defeat the Daleks. (Watch below.)
Yes, I realize this is a TV show, but that’s the heroism and fearlessness people crave. Surrender has never proven an effective get-out-the-vote tactic. Democrats shouldn’t give up, and they definitely shouldn’t negotiate or collaborate with terrorists and fascists, no matter what they might say on the Senate treadmill.
Dan Savage wrote about his own father voting for W even though W was anti gay. Savage told his father, who said W supported those poicies "just for the votes" that it didn't matter if someone punched him in the face because the needed the votes or because they believed it, he was still getting punched in the face.
We are all getting punced in the face.
And the fucking gym? Seriously? As we watch federal employees stripped of their jobs? Might as well be a cigar smoke filled back room there, Chucky. You are old and out of date. Get out of the goddamed way.
and he’s got the chutzpah to hawk his book
This is what I posted on his website page:
Senator Schumer,
I usually support you, but this is too much. Not only do you do a 180 on the CR, you now expect us to spend $56 to come to your book tour?! The American people are rapidly losing faith in Democrat party, to which I have been a member for 52 years!
Where is your common sense? People are losing their benefits, 401ks are tanking and we are cruelly arresting, incarcerating, and deporting illegal and legal immigrants . Not to mention all of our institutions are infiltrated with traitors. They are trying to start a war with Canada, Panama and Greenland. AND we now side with RUSSIA!! But, I guess your book is more important.
Your are the Senate Minority leader, your job is to make sure you do what's best for us and to be a leader that the members of your party look up to. The only one who looks up to you, besides the 8 that blindly followed you is DONALD TRUMP. And he'll throw you under the bus in a heartbeat.
Do your job or get out of the way.