For years, Democrats have stood by as their leaders have insisted they are powerless to do what they’ve promised, only to watch Donald Trump, in his second term, do whatever he feels like, no matter what the law says — be it firing tens of thousands of federal workers, freezing congressionally appropriated funds, or, now, moving to deport immigrants without any due process.
Last week, 10 Democratic senators, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), helped advance House Republicans’ partisan spending bill — a bill that Democrats had no input on, and which allows Trump and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to continue lawlessly freezing programs and redirecting funds as they wish.
Democrats have a lengthy history of failing to do things they’ve promised while offering exceedingly technical excuses. They couldn’t raise the federal minimum wage because the Senate parliamentarian (i.e. their unelected adviser) said so. They couldn’t codify federal abortion rights, enact a public health insurance option, protect Americans’ voting rights, or limit dark money’s influence on politics due to the existence of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. They couldn’t eliminate or reform the filibuster, they argued, because it would be necessary down the line, when the party lost power.
Of course, a filibuster might have been useful last week, but Democrats broke it to ensure the passage of Trump’s spending bill. Republicans needed votes from Democrats in order to pass the legislation. Democrats gave them those votes for nothing in return — with some, like Schumer, arguing that allowing a government shutdown would be worse than passing Republicans’ spending bill.
“What happened this week — a total cave on a totally partisan long-term funding bill — hasn’t happened in the 20 years I’ve covered Congress,” Steven Dennis, a longtime Capitol Hill reporter for Bloomberg News, noted Saturday.
The surrender, which drew enthusiastic praise from Trump, generated unprecedented blowback from Democratic lawmakers as well as reliable party supporters. For a moment, it seemed that the party had finally grown tired of its leader’s performative helplessness and refusal to stand up to Trump. Some ultra-reliable Democratic Party supporters online demanded Schumer step down, while others called for him and the rest of Democrats who supported the spending bill to face primary challenges.
Will this anger last? Will it be channeled into something meaningful? The answers to those questions all remain to be seen — though there’s indication already that Schumer, for one, is worried about blowback. On Monday, he postponed his book tour.
While the senator was busy bailing on a promotional tour, the Trump administration was eager to show the opposition and the country how it planned to wield its immense power for the foreseeable future — powers that for now have the begrudging cash-blessing from Schumer and some other Democratic senators. Trump immediately got to work using an archaic wartime law to deport hundreds of people whom his administration is accusing of gang membership to El Salvador. When a federal judge issued an emergency order demanding the administration stop, Team Trump responded by openly mocking the authority of the court.
Furthermore, on Friday, the president ordered the gutting of several more federal agencies, including the council dedicated to reducing homelessness in America.
All of this is now being carried out with the comfort of knowing that Democratic lawmakers have little opportunity to stop them — and that Schumer ditched whatever semblance of leverage they may have had on Friday.
Recent polling suggests that Democratic voters want their lawmakers to fight Trump’s agenda, rather than work with Trump and his allies. And last week, there were signs that the liberal elite on Capitol Hill were inching ever so slightly in the direction of, as one Democratic lawmaker characterizes it to Rolling Stone, “open, righteous revolt” against their own leadership — most specifically, Schumer, who has become the primary target of the ire.
Beginning on Thursday night, Rolling Stone was bombarded with numerous messages or calls from furious Democratic senior Hill staffers, longtime liberal and progressive operatives, and liberal and center-left lawmakers who couldn’t stomach that their party’s Senate leader was so willing to surrender to Trump and Musk.
Indeed, the word “surrender” was used, angrily, by a majority of these Democratic sources. They had endured decades of living with the stereotype that Republican politicians fear their own base, and Democratic elected officials hate their own base, and that it shows in each party’s public output and propensity — or lack thereof — for sheer ruthlessness.
One senior Democratic Senate aide notes that the party spends “all our time fundraising off of taking the fight to Trump and Elon; so what are we supposed to say to our own people when we demonstrate to them that we aren’t able to put up even a minimum level of resistance?”
On Thursday, a line was crossed. “Grow a pair,” says one Senate Democrat, directing their (albeit, private and not on-the-record) ire at Schumer. “We have a very short window to tank the defeatist ambitions of our own leader!”
The window was indeed short. And by the close of the week, the Democratic lawmakers who wanted a battle royale would have to settle for more excuses. And the policymakers sitting on the other side of the aisle couldn’t believe their luck.
Or, perhaps the problem was — to various Dems, anyway — that these Republicans absolutely could believe their luck. They’d become accustomed to Democrats’ surrender by now.
Multiple senior GOP sources in both chambers on the Hill and within the Trump administration were quick to blab to Rolling Stone about how thrilled they were at Schumer’s willingness to cave — because they now believe they can get away with the same tactics in the next funding showdown and exclude Democrats from the process.
Trump aides and other administration officials were similarly giddy at the idea that, in the words of one official, “for all that big talk” from Schumer and other leading Dems about how Trump, Musk, and the rest are a rampaging, authoritarian threat to the material and constitutional health of the republic, the minority leader was unwilling to put up any actual fight. This Trump official also claims that any widespread intra-party rage at Schumer is “good for us,” as it would inflame squabbling and power struggles in an already weakened opposition.
Whether there’s truth in that or not, an increasing number of progressive activists and policymakers are coalescing around the notion that the stakes are now immeasurably high — and that waging an effective campaign against Trump’s wrath is impossible with the current order of liberal establishment leadership.
In the wake of last week’s surrender, the progressive organizing group Indivisible called for Schumer to step down as Senate minority leader, following an emergency vote among the organization’s leaders.
Ezra Levin, the group’s co-founder, tells Rolling Stone the vast majority of the group’s leaders believe this is necessary — and that they are in much firmer agreement about this than they were about the need for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race last year after his calamitous debate with Trump.
“Back last year after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, we called [an] emergency meeting of Indivisible leaders across the country to ask if Indivisible should call on Biden to drop. It was roughly evenly split — one third ‘drop,’ one third ‘stay,’ one third ‘I don’t know.’ Where they were unified was on calling for it to be [Vice President Kamala] Harris if Biden dropped out, so that’s the position we took,” Levin says. “For this [latest] emergency call, the vote was not close. 91 percent voted to have us call for [Schumer] to drop from leadership. This is astounding.”
Levin adds: “Indivisible is not made up of radicals who hate that party. These are rank-and-file Democratic organizers who are looking at how they can organize against Trump and Musk and figure out some way to retake the Senate next year. Essentially nobody believes we have a stronger hand with Schumer as an anchor on the party … This is simply a choice between the Democratic Party or Chuck Schumer. And I don’t think we can afford to abandon the party while Musk and Trump are threatening destruction of the republic. Our leadership is dragging us down — change horses or drown.”
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