Shutdown Schumer
Stuck between responsibility and rabid rebels, the New York Senator may think recklessness buys insurance for his own political skin
This week Washington is going to party like it is 2013. Except instead of a right-y Tea Party, we have a left-y Chai Party.
In 2013, the House Speaker was Republican John Boehner and the President was Barack Obama. Boehner, feeling pressure from Tea Party conservatives on our party’s flank, could not bring a “clean” funding bill to keep the government open to the floor for a vote; Obama sitting ready to sign one, held the high ground.
This time it is Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer backed into deferring to the flank of his party, refusing to let the “clean” funding bill already approved by the House reach the floor for a vote. Like Boehner then, Schumer has a whole career’s worth of opposition to shutdown brinksmanship. Like Boehner then, Schumer is rightly nervous he might face an intra-party coup if he does not show a kamikaze side.
The old New York general is suppressing his regular army instincts and steering the nose of his party’s plane into irresponsibility – risking a wreck for the country to tickle his own guerillas.
Will the press make Schumer own this norm-breaking? They made Boehner own his – for all 16 days of it. Politico called it “Boehner’s pivotal moment.” The New York Times ran an editorial with the headline: “John Boehner’s shutdown.”
Boehner’s conundrum and Schumer’s bear more resemblance than just the physics of being squeezed by ideologues. Conservatives in 2013 were smarting over the fact that they had won the House in 2010 on a pledge to repeal Obamacare, and yet somehow, three years later, both the law and the disfavored President were still there.
Schumer today faces a boisterous base that has similarly not come to terms with the continued voter-sanctioned existence of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, or the natural continuance that as a freshly re-elected President, he gets to keep a good bit of the policy he has put in place, including his tax law.
Sometimes election denial comes many months after the votes are counted, in the form of losers who do not accept that the guy who just won was legitimately empowered to do what he just did. That is the election denialism ringing in Schumer’s ear right now - a chorus of liberal pundits and gray-haired ladies with NPR tote bags demanding that he put up a fight. None of those complainers have a strategy by which this fight might be won, of course, and he knows it.
The best hope for Schumer is media hypocrisy. Will the organs of the legacy press treat this shutdown as they have all the ones before? As a reckless temper tantrum of the ridiculous minority? Or will they, too, forget their prior principles?
In dissing Boehner’s shutdown, the Times faulted him for “encouraging the impossible quest of House Republicans to dismantle health care reform.” Will the Times call Schumer’s attempt to dismantle Trump’s tax bill an “impossible quest”? The Times warned Boehner’s shut-down would “take a grievous economic toll.” Can we expect that kind of warning from The Gray Lady this time? I will not hold my breath.
When it comes to the country’s risks, by encouraging this shutdown, Schumer is playing a riskier game than Boehner was. While Boehner fought the fight our side’s rebels demanded, the pragmatic Ohioan always knew realism always lurked in the top drawer of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk, a figurative pen to negotiate a base-defying compromise any time it became untenable to resist.
In playing good cop to his own rabble, Schumer does not have a bad cop partner in House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has long demonstrated an unwillingness to make his side’s left-wing children eat their vegetables – though given some of their proclivities, we might ought to pick a different distasteful metaphor. If Schumer gets stuck in a long, unpopular shutdown, it is hard to see how he could wink and get Jeffries to take the heat and negotiate a surrender for the both of them.
Another wrinkle this time is that this President has a different end game than Obama did. Obama’s goal once the shutdown was over was to get all 800,000 furloughed workers back on the job, with back pay. Trump’s objective will be to make sure nobody who is furloughed ever comes back to work again – and his budget director has already said so. Jeffries’ response to that threat is: “get lost.” Federal workers probably find little solace in that playground taunt, and they will have Jeffries to thank if his swagger walks them into termination.
Schumer should also remember how the story ended for Boehner.
After his, and McConnell’s inevitable shutdown surrender in 2013, Republicans took over the Senate in 2014 to go with our House majority. Following one more year of failing to appease the base by making Obama disappear from the White House, or Obamacare disappear from the law books, Boehner himself disappeared – retiring from Congress abruptly.
As Schumer contemplates whether to be reckless or responsible he should recognize the cannibals never stay satiated for long.
In Case You Missed It: Last week’s column MINUTES TO MEMORIES elicited a lot of comments in my inbox. I promise not to write too many more columns about my estranged tumor, but I appreciate the kind words.
Virginia Is Getting Tight: I’ve seen three quality private polls showing Republican enthusiasm surging in the Old Dominion since Charlie Kirk’s assassination. As you watch these races come down to the wire, maybe go back and read my set-up piece from summer, YES VIRGINIA, THERE ARE ELECTIONS IN 2025.
The Archive: You can read any of my four dozen or so columns at The What For website, and compare your favorites to the leaderboard of the whole readership.