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As his party demanded a brawl, the Senate minority leader dug in — only to later conclude his members were wading into a fight they couldn’t win.
That description of Mitch McConnell in 2021 also fits Chuck Schumer this week.
There are more potential parallels between their situations. McConnell’s experience four years ago, walking away from a battle over the debt limit as Republicans flirted with economic disaster, was hardly the first time he took heat from the right for advancing policies that were deeply unpopular with his party’s base.
The former GOP leader’s tendency to break from his party’s activists turned conservative senators against him in 2022, and he departed the post last year on his own terms. It’s not yet clear whether Schumer’s support for a divisive Republican spending bill will ignite similar slow-burning contempt from the left, or whether he’ll be able to reassemble goodwill across the party to take on Trump.
But one thing is clear: While Schumer faces protests at his home and office, intensely personal attacks and renewed talk about a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there’s no groundswell in his caucus to remove him.
“He’s taking the hit for saying, ‘I don’t want to risk the shutdown’ … people respect that Schumer did what he thought was absolutely right. That’s what leaders should do, right?” asked Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.
Hickenlooper added that the Democratic “base is agitated, and they’ll make it known to all of us, but said that “I don’t see him as in peril in any way. I think he made a tough decision.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said that “the leader that needs pile-on right now is Donald Trump,” not Schumer. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Schumer’s most vulnerable member, even offered a boost: “I have great confidence in the leader and I think he’s done an outstanding job for the Democratic caucus, and continues to.”
Hickenlooper, Baldwin and Ossoff all are breaking with Schumer’s position.
None of the half-dozen Democratic senators interviewed for this story criticized Schumer directly, though several declined to comment on his leadership. They are, however, second-guessing a strategy for which their party appeared to have no backup plan — betting that House Speaker Mike Johnson couldn’t pass critical legislation on a tight deadline.
Now that House Republicans funded the government, passed a budget and reelected Johnson in short succession with Trump’s help, relying on House dysfunction is no longer a reliable play. This week it resulted in House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ members lining up to lambaste the GOP bill, then reiterating their opposition after Schumer announced he would vote to fund the government.
Schumer says he’s fine with taking harsh criticism despite the fact most Democrats don’t want a government shutdown; he sees it as the dark side of being leader as he allows most of his members to vote no and still avoid a shutdown.
Yet Schumer’s fellow New York Democratic leader gave him no support: Jeffries said “next question” on Friday when asked if he had lost confidence in Schumer.
One Democratic senator said on Friday that it was time to regroup and bring the party together ahead of the next time Republicans need its votes for must-pass legislation. That could happen as soon as this summer on the debt ceiling, not to mention the next shutdown impasse.
“Our caucus needs to take a step back and try to think through: How do we better anticipate and come up with these strategies? … We knew that this date was coming,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J.
“We need our unity, as a caucus already in the minority, and anything further just divides us.”
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It’s a delicious moment for Senate Republicans, who just spent four years divided on tactics as some sought to work with Democrats and others mounted scorched-earth opposition to former President Joe Biden. GOP leaders who’ve taken their own tough votes and endured the resulting criticism praised Schumer for doing the same.
They also didn’t hesitate to twist the knife.
“He’s just going to have to take it,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. “The reality is, you can’t fight numbers, and you also can’t find public opinion that a shutdown is a misery march. And I think he just saw the reality.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has taken plenty of digs from the GOP base, called Schumer’s no-win position “justice.” Still, he added he understood Schumer’s calculus: “Sometimes you have to make hard decisions that aren’t popular.
“What was interesting,” Cornyn added, is that it “looks to me like he’s under fire from some of his own people. So I maybe feel a little nervous about maintaining his position as leader.”
Schumer laid out his position on the Senate floor twice, in an op-ed in the New York Times and in a pen and pad with reporters on Thursday night. He told the Times he’ll “take the bullets” fired onto his position.
He condemned the spending bill itself but warned a shutdown would empower Trump and Elon Musk to shutter more government agencies with aplomb.
He seemed surefooted with the decision on Friday, acknowledging that “different senators come down on different sides” but concluding that “in a shutdown, American families would be hurt in ways they almost have never been.”
Burgess’s view
Being Senate minority leader is often easier than running the chamber. Usually it’s about rallying the troops to vote no, criticizing the floor schedule and creating wedges that split the majority party.
But every once in a while, the minority leader (Schumer, in this case) faces a choice that leads to nationwide second-guessing. It happened to McConnell several times, and it could easily happen to Schumer again soon.
Still, it’s a little confounding to see so many Democrats essentially calling for a government shutdown. They have few concrete red lines in talks with Republicans other than a month-long spending patch.
It’s not exactly a winning hand going into a shutdown fight when Trump’s handling of the economy is the big story across the country.
Schumer already touched the shutdown stove once in 2018, anyway: Democrats briefly closed the government down over immigration; other than some failed votes, they ended up with nothing to show for it. So it’s not surprising that he’d rather focus on fighting GOP tax cuts than pick a funding battle.
Democrats probably won’t know whether it was the right choice until the fall of 2026.
Room for Disagreement
Even if Senate Democrats aren’t bashing Schumer directly, some are certainly criticizing the position he ended up in — and they’re not harmonizing with the argument that he’s protecting his caucus.
“It is terrible to vote for this Republican plan to let Donald Trump and Elon Musk fire people and spend taxpayer money however they want,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “I can only speak for myself. I’m voting against this. That’s all I’m going to do.”
Notable
- Some Democrats are urging AOC to primary Schumer, CNN reports. Please note: The race isn’t until 2028.
- Schumer took some initial heat in 2017 from anti-Trump progressives, but the Obamacare fight months later showed him keeping the party together, Politico reported.