Something you can usually give Sen. Schumer credit for is being slick. That can be an asset in D.C., but in 2025, slick senate operators who know how to work the levers of power are not as in demand in either party as they used to be. With only 7% strong approval, no one, including Dems, like their party much, and even fewer like their leadership. Sen. Schumer, who works better as a backstage operator, is a terrible messenger for the product on a national level and to the base. Now his time has come.
The CR was a tough choice for Republican fiscal hawks, but it was an even tougher one for Sen. Schumer who had a choice between a government shutdown and keeping the government going. Schumer decided that a government shutdown wasn’t the way to reboot the Dems, but much of his party’s activist base disagrees.
In the past, congressional Republicans were terrified of a government shutdown because they would be blamed for it, but the Trump administration is clearly not worried about that kind of popularity contest. They kept going and Schumer blinked. Now the Dems want his head. Schumer has argued that the failure of the resolution would have given Trump even more power, but nobody in his party’s crazies really care.
This puts Sen. Schumer’s political career on track for a cliff. The question is who’s going to replace him in the Senate. And how long until he faces a serious primary challenge from the Left?
There was a time when Dems and their media warned that only irresponsible madmen would go ahead with a government shutdown. Now, just as dissent has become patriotic again, so have government shutdowns.
