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| Source:The Bulwark host Tim Miller & Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York) |
From The Bulwark
"This rant from Tim was so hot that we’re releasing it early! Check out today’s Bulwark Podcast, coming at 3pm today, for the whole thing."
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| Source:The Bulwark host Tim Miller & Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York) |
from The Bulwark
"Rick Wilson Has an URGENT Message for Chuck Schumer: SHUT IT DOWN! Chuck, it's time to ask yourself: what would Mitch McConnell do?"
From former U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger (Republican, Illinois) talking about Chuck Schumer's decision here:
"Democrats just got absolutely and completely rolled. Never once in my time in congress did we ever give up like this.
Congrats Senator Schumer, you have thoroughly misplayed the funding fight. You’ve done everything possible to take ownership of it, despite democrats having no levers in govt.
Are ya new?
From Adam Kinzinger
More from Adam Kinzinger and this time from his blog:
Hey! From my hotel in NYC, I wanted to go over the battle so far over govt funding. The really dumb moves on messaging occurred early and often, and now Democrats are poised to capitulate, and if they don’t, they will struggle to win the message war because they ALREADY SAID they could stop it.
I’ve never imagined the leadership would be so bad at this.
Regardless, the Trump “agenda” is wearing thin, and I strongly believe we will win this long fight on behalf of sanity.
From Adam Kinzinger
As my colleague Erik Schneider wrote earlier today:
"So the Senate Minority Leader on Wednesday acting like he would try to prevent the Senate from even voting on the House continuing resolution on Wednesday, to last night doing a political surrender and doing a political getting the hell out of Dodge before he was captured... Cilliza explained why he did that. But I have some reasons as well:
Wednesday was about political spin looking tough to his left-wing flank not just in caucus, senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but on the other side of Congress, with left-wing Democrats in the House: Alexandria O. Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, just to name a few. If you are familiar with the House Socialist Caucus, I mean Progressive Caucus (natural mistake) you have a pretty good idea who I'm talking about... The Squad as well. But as Chris Cilliza said...
From The New Democrat
As I wrote on Tuesday:
"Just for the record: I'm not in favor of forced government shutdowns, whether they're done by Republicans (which is normally the case) or by Democrats, which was led by Senate Minority Chuck Schumer in 2018. The politics is bad, but worst, if disrupts the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of government workers who need their jobs, as well as local businesses who rely on those workers to stay in business.
But, this is Tuesday and any potential government shutdown wouldn't be until 11:59PM Friday night. And asking Democrats to vote for a continuing resolution that probably cuts Medicaid anyway, is bad politics for them, its bad politics for vulnerable House Republicans, perhaps even Senate Republicans as well. One 1 House Democrat out of 215: Representative Jared Golden (Democrat, Maine) voted for it. So House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gets this as well.
So now the bill goes to the Senate where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will have a big decision to make:
block the bill, where Majority Leader John Thune would need 60 votes to get to final passage on it.
allow the bill to come up and tell your members to vote for cloture, but lock in all your members to vote against it and then use those Senate Republican votes against vulnerable Senate Republicans in 2026 when they have to run for reelection, where President Trump will probably be pretty unpopular by then (unless he drastically changes course)
Or, work with the Senate Majority Leader to get a compromise that both sides in the Senate could support, that would pass the House overwhelmingly...
From The New Democrat
As my colleague Derik Schneider wrote on Wednesday:
"So it looks like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and company have selected option a, which is to try to block this bill in hopes that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would sit down with Leader Schumer and they would work out a compromise. That's a really risky play. A lot of political incentive for the Majority Leader to say:
"No. We're in charge, we won the elections, we have The White House and Congress. Go ahead and shut the government down and take the blame for it".
Which would be my response even as a Democrat, (from a political standpoint) if the Democrats controlled The White House and Congress right now and someone was drunk, high, stupid, and crazy enough (trust me: plenty of people with all those characteristics at once in Washington) to elect me Senate Majority Leader.
If John Thune doesn't compromise here, this would be the best case scenario:
Senate Democrats relent and buck their leader and maybe 10 of them vote for cloture, just to avid the government shutdown on Friday...
From The New Democrat
Once again, The New Democrat is with James Carville on this... even if every Never-Trumper left in Donald Trump's world doesn't like that:
"Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight, and make the American people miss us. Only until the Trump administration has spiraled into the low 40s or high 30s in public approval polling percentages should we make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. Until then, I’m calling for a strategic political retreat," he wrote.
"With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead," the strategist continued.
"Carville compared his suggestion to a "tactical pause," and argued the Democrats needed to stop regularly playing defense against the Trump administration's actions.
"It’s a vision move — get out of the hour-to-hour, day-to-day combat where one side (ours) is largely playing defense and struggling to defend politically charged positions (like explaining D.E.I. or persuading voters to care about foreign aid), and take time to regroup, look forward and make decisions about where we want to get to over the next two years," Carville said...
From The New Democrat
The expression: "I think I've heard it all now", gets used a lot and I can imagine it may sound as exciting as elevator music in the,,. well, elevator. (I know I'm getting old) So how about: I'm old enough to remember when Conservatives didn't sound like Socialist Democrats. Huh? I bet you haven't heard that before.
I mean seriously... The Bulwark, The Lincoln Project, and freakin Conservative Republican Adam Kinzinger, who I still like a lot and respect a lot, but he, along with the Tim Miller's, the Rick Wilson's, they sound like Alexandria O. Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and every other left-wing member of the U.S. House right now, in response to what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is doing here.
If I didn't already have enough reasons not to join the Republican Party and join what's left of the Wendell Willkie/Nelson Rockefeller of that party and essentially be a Progressive/Conservative (trust me, that's not an Oxymoron) Republican, these Never-Trumper's just gave me that. Why? I'll tell you anyway: because they just sound just like the Socialists when it comes to how they critique the Democratic leadership.
Final point and Erik already told you why Chuck Schumer did what he did and I think both he and Chris Cillizza are right about this. So I'm not going to bore you any further than what Erik already did. (Ha, ha) But I'll leave you with this and just to pick up on what Cillizza and Erik said:
When you are no longer even in office, let alone in power, when you don't have to worry about being primaried in Congress, or being in a touch reelection battle in your own district or state, against a popular, mainstream candidate from the other party, very easy to say what Rick Wilson, Tim Miller, and Adam Kinzinger have said about Chuck Schumer and company the last 24 hours. The Senate Minority Leader, along with the swing state members of his own caucus who are up for reelection in 2026:
Ben Ray Lujan
Jon Ossoff
Minnesota will have an open seat in 26 because Senator Tina Smith is not running for reelection. Same thing in New Hampshire with Jeanne Shaheen and in Michigan with Gary Peters.
And for people who are thinking I'm just looking at the politics here and just playing politics... damn right I'm looking at the politics here. All the negative news this week has been for Donald Trump and MAGA. So why would Democrats want to jump in with the sharks and see how far they can swim? Let's keep the negative attention on the MAGA Party. This is Donald Trump's show right now. Democrats have essentially no power of their own to stop him. Let them run their own show off the air and replace them in 2027.
Shutting down the government is not just bad politics, but it's bad policy. And for people who are saying it won't last that long, not many people will be hurt, etc... those people don't work for government and don't have voters to answer to. And some of those folks like the Never-Trumper's are not even Democrats. So be careful who you listen to.
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