NY’s Chuck Schumer pledges to fight President Donald Trump amid Democratic criticism

WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has taken a beating for the past week for giving President Donald Trump a victory by allowing Republicans to pass their funding bill, but on Friday Schumer said he’s ramping up the fight against the president’s push for power and dismantling of the government.

In a phone interview with Newsday, Schumer acknowledged but downplayed criticism that has included calls for him to resign in favor of more combative leadership. He also laid out his next strike: New digital attack ads on Republican lawmakers that are part of his four-point plan for Democrats to make Trump and his cost-cutting adviser Elon Musk more unpopular. 

“They are the party of billionaires and helping the very wealthiest people. And we are the party of working people,” Schumer said. “We use Musk as a figure who personifies that the billionaires are running the show” and cutting benefits for most Americans.

Schumer acknowledged that he is facing one of his most difficult periods as the Senate Democratic leader, criticized by members of his own party while being attacked by activists who say he’s not fighting Trump hard enough and calling for him to resign as party leader.

The grassroots left-leaning group Indivisible is calling him too old for the job and is blaming him for using an out-of-date strategy against Trump and Musk’s massive firings and slashing of federal agencies. At anti-Trump rallies, some in the crowd call for someone to run against Schumer in a Democratic primary.

Even his former close ally, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), took a shot at him for agreeing to allow Republicans to pass the spending bill without getting a deal from them by saying, “I myself don’t give anything away for nothing.” 

“This is the toughest time he’s had within the party since he became a leading figure,” said William Galston, a governing expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “As an experienced professional politician, he made the less worse choice for the country, but he certainly made a bad choice for himself. I think he must have known that.”

Schumer, who has been an elected official for half a century and is regarded as a shrewd strategist, won his elevation to Senate Democratic leader seven years ago by raising copious sums of political donations for Democratic candidates and by outworking the heir apparent and taking his place. 

He has expressed no doubts about his decision to vote with nine other Democrat s  to end a filibuster that allowed Senate Republicans to pass the bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government open through Sept. 30.

He has repeatedly explained a decision that stunned many Democrats and their allies by saying he feared that Trump and Musk would do their worst damage to the federal government while Congress was sidelined, much worse than if it was open.

“As you know, my caucus had divisions about what the best thing to do was on the CR versus the shutdown,” Schumer said. “You know my view on the shutdown, but it would have been devastating.”

Schumer’s plan

Schumer said his plan is to lower Trump’s approval ratings to about 40% to loosen his grip on Senate Republicans to make it easier for them to work with Democrats.

Already Trump’s ratings have fallen from 50.5% approval on the day he took office to 47.9% while his disapproval ratings rose from 44.3% to 48.8%, according to the Real Clear Politics aggregation of polls conducted during that time.

“It’ll take a little while. We have to fire away and fire away and fire away. But his numbers are now lower than they’ve been,” Schumer said. “This is how we did it in 2017, but we’re using new techniques and much stronger messaging and all these other tools.”

Democrats have revamped communications strategy with more influencers, digital ads and TV appearances, he said. Democrats will hold days of action with legislators around the country talking about the damage government cuts will do to many people, as they did in a Medicaid Day of Action on Tuesday.

Schumer said Democrats also have worked with state attorney’s general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, and independent law groups that have filed more than 100 lawsuits to block Trump, many of them winning injunctions and temporary restraining orders.

Senators are holding “spotlight hearings” to focus on the “different excesses” of the Trump administration because the Republican majority won’t hold committee hearings on those issues. And he said, “We’re not going to give them votes for legislation that we think is bad.”

Schumer does not call himself the boss of the Senate Democrats. He calls himself “the orchestra leader,” and says the party has a leader only when it has a president in the White House.

“Now we have a lot of talent, and my job is to use that talent,” Schumer said. 

Blowback

The calls to oust Schumer as Senate Democratic leader could be heard at well-attended rallies led by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-East Elmhurst) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada this past week.

House Democrats who voted against the Republican funding bill, as well as the employee union, liberal groups and many others who opposed it, still have a lingering resentment for what they say was Schumer’s failure to effectively battle against Trump’s agenda.

So far only two House Democrats have called for him to step aside as Senate leader.

But Ezra Levin, co-founder of the left-leaning group Indivisible, said in a phone interview Friday that his members want Schumer to resign his leadership post now, and he dismissed Schumer’s four-point plan: “It’s just a communications plan, right?”

He critiqued Schumer’s strategy on the funding bill as flawed and condemned his failure to slow the process in the Senate and stop Democrats from voting for Trump nominees and Republican bills.

“It’s not about him being too progressive or not progressive enough. It’s about him being an appeaser rather than a fighter,” he said.

He contrasted Schumer with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when he was the Senate Republican leader.

“Mitch McConnell was a vicious operator when he was in control, and he knew exactly what tools to use to whip his caucus in line,” Levin said. “So, we need a Democratic Mitch McConnell.”

Schumer, however, said his plan and course of action will work.

“The good news about this is that the strategy unifies our caucus. The whole caucus agrees with it, from Bernie all the way over to [Pennsylvania Sen. John] Fetterman,” he said.

“It appeals to the public — 80% of the public agrees with it, including 60% of Republicans who don’t like billionaire tax cuts and making the middle class pay for it. And it’s true, that’s what they’re doing,” he said.

Change or no change?

Some political analysts doubted Schumer would be ousted from his post, while others said it is too early to tell. Some called the way Schumer abruptly changed his vote on the filibuster from one day to the next the real problem.

“I think Schumer made the right call, but the execution of it blindsided people,” said Jim Kessler, president of the moderate Democratic group Third Way.

“That was uncharacteristic. Schumer usually doesn’t surprise his colleagues on a position of this magnitude. So I think that that’s part of the blowback he’s getting,” said Kessler, who made no prediction on whether Schumer will survive the blowback.

Levin said the growing grassroots opposition and anger among many Democrats and allied groups to Schumer will eventually force the 45 Democrats in the Senate to act.

Galston of the Brookings Institution said he doubts Schumer will lose his post, but did not totally rule it out.

If a sufficient number of his Senate Democratic colleagues urge him to go and Schumer concludes that his position is no longer sustainable, Galston said, “I think he will bow out gracefully.”

But he added, “I don’t think we’ve reached that point.”

He explained: “What happens at the grassroots will affect the judgment of some of his colleagues, but a lot of them are veterans who have seen firestorms before and they know that these kinds of spikes in anger and pressure don’t always sustain themselves.”