In 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer unleashed a threat against the Supreme Court’s conservative justices in the wake of their decision to overturn Roe vs Wade’s national protection for abortion. ‘You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,’ he bellowed. ‘You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.’
Although Schumer’s bellicose words may have contributed to an attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life back then, five years later it is not the men and women in robes suffering a whirlwind, but rather Schumer himself, and it is one of his own making.
This week, Schumer is facing calls to step down from his leadership position from multiple House Democrats including Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and neo-centrist Rep. Ro Khana, D-Calif., after his shambolic performance during the government shutdown.
It is likely only a matter of time before such calls for Schumer’s ouster echo in the upper chamber as well.
In the end, Christ had an easier 40 days in the desert than Schumer had during this shutdown, where he went from swearing not just that Democrats would never back down, but that they were winning the fight politically, to watching Democrats capitulate with nothing in return.
As former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pointed out, this was the ‘Seinfeld shutdown,’ a shutdown about nothing, and Schumer was decidedly George.
Tellingly, Chuck himself did not sign on to the deal to open the government, start paying out SNAP benefits and unchoke our airports, which only makes him appear weaker, because he can’t control his caucus.
Schumer is now facing the first true crisis of his five decades in politics, and it doesn’t seem like he knows what hit him.
The scuttlebut in Washington, D.C., and the Empire State is that, by hook or by crook, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will take Schumer’s Senate seat in 2028, just like she took Rep. Joe Crowley’s House seat seven years ago.
AOC is not being particularly shy about it, saying this week, ‘We have several Senate primaries this cycle. I know I’m being asked about New York, [but] that is years from now. I have to remind my own constituents because they think that this election is this year.’
This is a long way from, ‘Chuck is doing a great job and I have no plans to run against him.’
In the recent mayor’s race in New York City, in which AOC was democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani’s most important surrogate, Schumer bravely declined, even on Election Day itself, to disclose whether he had cast a ballot for Zany Zohran.
It was actually quite amazing: Schumer is the highest-ranking elected Democrat in the United States of America and he decided not to weigh in on whether his party should embrace communism.
Schumer couldn’t reject Mamdani because he and his ilk are obviously the future of the party, but he couldn’t embrace him because his pro-capitalism and pro-Israel donors won’t have it.
Schumer wasn’t sitting on the fence in the mayor’s race, he was impaled on it.
Right now, whether fairly or not, Schumer is the avatar for the old establishment Democrat Party that shuffled off the stage with former President Joe Biden. He is the political version of the Washington Generals, being dunked on over and over by the more talented socialist Globetrotters.
In fact, this whirlwind that Schumer has reaped is entirely his own fault. At any point, he could have shown courage, acted like an adult and tried to work in good faith with Republicans and the Trump administration. Instead, he decided to curse on TikTok like the radical kids who want his job.
It was Schumer who helped to oust former Democrat senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin for opposing the party’s push to nuke the filibuster in 2021. Where did he think his support was going to come from once he tossed out the moderates?
In the end, Schumer’s career will be a cautionary tale, lacking the courage to rein in the radical elements in his caucus and party. He instead opened the door for them and hastened his own exile from power.
Chuck Schumer has well and truly reaped the whirlwind, and in very short order he will most likely be paying the price.