During the first Trump administration, some wondered why the president so proficient at parceling out nicknames insisted on calling the then-Senate majority leader “Cryin’ Chuck.” Six years later, the answer to what’s behind Schumer’s tears has become clearer: his own party is ready to plant at least 23 daggers in his back.
Speaking in Brewer yesterday, progressive Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate Graham Platner gave voice to mounting discontent among Democrats about their leadership by calling on Schumer to throw in towel. Doing so worked well for him in the sense that a half-dozen or more national outlets cited him as an example of how the party’s young want to defenestrate the old.
And that was even before eight Senate Democrats defied their leader by voting with Republicans to re-open the government. Schumer failed, Platner said in a phrase reminiscent of his own military background, “to hold the line.”
But Platner has more reason to dislike Schumer than the aging New York senator’s apparent fecklessness. After all, it was “Cryin’ Chuck” who led the effort to draft Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) into the race, potentially complicating the now-oyster farmer’s steady march to cinch the party’s nomination.
Earlier, he’d been less blunt but nonetheless understandable in his intention. At a rally in Damariscotta late last month, Platner asked attendees whether they wanted Washington, DC to pick their next senator for them and the crowd of gentle, graying midcoast liberals found their own inner renegades by responding in unison with an angry ‘No.’
They’re not alone.
Both Indivisible and MoveOn — two progressive groups with well-used advocacy bullhorns — have called on their supporters to reach out to their Democrat senators and demand Schumer’s head. So far, no member of the Senate Democrat caucus has heeded this call, but the Senate can seem at times more like a country club than a vibrant political theater. Its members usually prefer the shadows when it comes to subterfuge.
A growing number of House Democrats have been less shy. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, also a former Marine, said on Monday that Schumer’s hit his expiration date as have other notable Dems like California Rep. Ro Khanna, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib — no shrinking violet she — and Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia. Expect that list to grow.
With the shutdown, which Rhode Island Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had called “our only leverage,” now shunted, Democrats are angry and smell blood in the water. Schumer has survived past insurrections and it may well be too early to count him out, but there is a growing sense that someone — other that U.S. Treasury which is now turning back on the spigot — will have to pay.
If Schumer’s tears prove fatal, then the oysterman will have a new feather in his cap, complementing the one he earned by instructing his supporters go get out and kill referendum Question 1 last week before it went down in flames.
Democrats are angry and want to lash out. For her part, Mills tried to get in on the act by criticizing Susan Collins on Monday for voting to re-open government without extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance subsidies. But compared to Platner, her voice was less growly or in touch with the moment.
Should Schumer indeed fall, it will be the first indication she is missing the boat.
