“For sure the Republican bill is a terrible option,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. “But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take … much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
Make no mistake: This is Schumer caving.
And it is pissing off lots of Democrats — in and out of Congress. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called the move a “betrayal” of House Democrats who, earlier this week, took a tough vote in opposition to the Republican government funding plan. Lots of activists on the left wanted Democrats to fight on this, refusing to give Republicans any support and battling it out in the blame game.
So, why did Schumer do it? I think there are three possible explanations:
He didn’t have the votes. While Schumer said on Wednesday that there weren’t seven Democrats willing to vote to end debate on the bill and bring it to a final vote, the ground underneath him appeared to shift over the last 24 hours. Trust me: Schumer does not want to vote for this bill. But he also understands that as leader he has to channel the desires of his caucus and provide protection to endangered Democrats who want or feel they need to be for it.
They didn’t want this fight. A whole lot of politics — and life — is picking fights you know (or think) you can win. With the stock market plunging, Donald Trump ploughing ahead with his tariff plans and polling showing the public losing confidence in the president’s handling of the economy, Democrats may well have decided they didn’t want to change the subject. That while they might have been able to win the politics of a government shutdown, they are already winning the economic argument — and they need to keep the focus there.
If it shuts down, does it start up again? I think there were real worries among Democrats that if the federal government shut down, it might provide even more opportunities for Trump and Elon Musk to further reduce the workforce. As in, maybe just never re-start specific agencies or departments. And Democrats didn’t want to take that risk.
I’m not saying you need to agree with all — or any! — of those explanations. But I DO think they all played a role in Schumer’s capitulation.
Expect the funding bill to pass easily this afternoon. The government will remain open. And Democrats will have to hope they made the right call...
 |
| Source:Chris Cillizza with his take on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's decision. |
From Chris Cillizza
"Why did Democrats cave???"
From Chris Cillizza
"Niall Stanage and Amber Duke discuss Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) support for the Republican funding bill."
 |
| Source:The Hill with a look at U.S. Representative Alexandria O. Cortez (Democratic Socialist, Bronx, New York) & Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York) |
From The Hill
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's own words:
"While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse," he said the Senate floor following a heated caucus meeting. "I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down."
From C-SPAN
U.S. Representative Alexandria O. Cortez (Democratic Socialist, Bronx, New York) talking about Senate Minority Leader Schumer's decision here:
“I believe that’s a tremendous mistake,” she responded. “First and foremost, the American people, if anyone has held a town hall or has seen what has been happening in town halls, the American people, whether they are Republicans, independents, Democrats, are up in arms about Elon Musk and the actual gutting of federal agencies across the board. This continuing resolution codifies much of this chaos that Elon Musk is wreaking havoc on the federal government.
And so to me, it is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free when we’ve been sent here to protect Social Security, protect Medicaid, and protect Medicare,” Ocasio-Cortez added."
From Mediate
From James Carville talking about how Democrats should serve as the opposition party:
"Democratic strategist James Carville called on Democrats to make a "strategic political retreat" in a guest essay for The New York Times on Tuesday, telling members of his party "to play dead."
"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.
He said Americans were likely not waiting around for lawmakers and commentators to make the same old arguments to criticize the president.
"They’re tired of it, and our Democratic voters are tired of watching us moan and groan to cover up our impotency out of power. They want us to be smarter than that," he added...
From The New Democrat
From my colleague Rik Schneider talking about this 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 about this 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
I think this explanation from Chis Cillizza says it all. But if you are a gluten for punishment, I'll give you my take as well:
"So, why did Schumer do it? I think there are three possible explanations:
He didn’t have the votes. While Schumer said on Wednesday that there weren’t seven Democrats willing to vote to end debate on the bill and bring it to a final vote, the ground underneath him appeared to shift over the last 24 hours. Trust me: Schumer does not want to vote for this bill. But he also understands that as leader he has to channel the desires of his caucus and provide protection to endangered Democrats who want or feel they need to be for it.
They didn’t want this fight. A whole lot of politics — and life — is picking fights you know (or think) you can win. With the stock market plunging, Donald Trump ploughing ahead with his tariff plans and polling showing the public losing confidence in the president’s handling of the economy, Democrats may well have decided they didn’t want to change the subject. That while they might have been able to win the politics of a government shutdown, they are already winning the economic argument — and they need to keep the focus there.
If it shuts down, does it start up again? I think there were real worries among Democrats that if the federal government shut down, it might provide even more opportunities for Trump and Elon Musk to further reduce the workforce. As in, maybe just never re-start specific agencies or departments. And Democrats didn’t want to take that risk...
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:
"They didn’t want this fight. A whole lot of politics — and life — is picking fights you know (or think) you can win. With the stock market plunging, Donald Trump ploughing ahead with his tariff plans and polling showing the public losing confidence in the president’s handling of the economy, Democrats may well have decided they didn’t want to change the subject. That while they might have been able to win the politics of a government shutdown, they are already winning the economic argument — and they need to keep the focus there.
If it shuts down, does it start up again? I think there were real worries among Democrats that if the federal government shut down, it might provide even more opportunities for Trump and Elon Musk to further reduce the workforce. As in, maybe just never re-start specific agencies or departments. And Democrats didn’t want to take that risk...
Donald Trump and his political company have had a really bad week this week:
The Stock Market tumbling
Mr. Businessman and CEO Donald J. Trump now with 56% disapproval and not just on the economy, and he's not even 3 months in on his 2nd term and he's at 37% on the economy. You are not going to find another American president since Americans have gotten their news on TV, who is more unlikable and less popular, than Donald John Trump at this point in his 2nd term of his presidency.
The President of the United States can't even answer the question will the American economy be in recession this year? That was from Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo. Not some flaming, hippie, leftist from MSNBC or some other place.
So to get to the left-wing (I prefer to say far-left flank, or Socialist Left) of the Democratic Party.:
While they're watching the Republican Party burn not just their house down, but their whole damn neighborhood down and forcing their members of Congress who will be in tough reelection battles next year (House & Senate) while their own dear leader doesn't give a damn about their political futures, just securing their own...
you have these left-wing Democrats who are essentially trying to serve as political firefighters and come to the rescue of the Republican Party and try to look as crazy, irresponsible, and politically stupid as the MAGA Party. And calling for Chuck Schumer and company to shut down the U.S. Government, because they voted against the House CR.
What we have here is the difference between a political leader, a responsible political leader in Chuck Schumer, who has been in Congress for 44 years now, before Alexandria O. Cortez and company were even born (in most cases) versus the "political badass" who is always looking to go viral and be politically popular with young political hipsters and Hollywood celebrities.
As long as Alexandria Cortez is in the U.S. House, she'll never have to worry about her own reelection there. Now, if she wants to move up in Congress and even serve as a ranking member or chairman in the House, or move into leadership in the House, perhaps even run for the Senate someday, she's going to have to moderate and think about the politics of other Democrats and not just her left-wing.
But when you are in Congress and you are not in leadership and you have a very safe district or state, where you never have to worry about getting less than 60% of the vote, where you have zero governing responsibility whatsoever and having to worry about the political future of your fellow members, you can make the statement that Representative Cortez makes all the time and talk about the need to replace the leadership and accuse them of backstabbing, political treason, etc.
But when you are 1 of the adults at the political table and you have an entire caucus to worry about, not just your own seat in Congress, you have to look at the big picture and have both feet on the ground.
Ideally, the House CR probably never even comes to the floor. But a big part of being a political leader is being a realist and making the best of the situation at hand. Not what you want it to be. You can see just this week why Chuck Schumer is the leader of the Senate Democrats and why Alexandria Cortez is a House backbencher.
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