Democratic sell-out

THE REPUBLICAN FUNDING BILL THAT ten members of the Senate Democratic caucus helped pass last Friday is a disgrace. It’s also a sham.

Defenders of the bill have called it a continuing resolution, arguing that it simply kept in place the spending levels of the last year of Joe Biden’s administration. But it cannot be called that. This partisan legislation, written by Republicans without any input from Democrats, whose votes they needed to overcome the Senate filibuster, gutted billions of dollars of federal programs. We’re talking cuts to health care, cancer research, housing, infrastructure, and veterans’ services. Maybe worst of all, House Republicans used a procedural measure before final passage of the bill that prevents Congress from having to vote on keeping or getting rid of Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular tariffs, which are raising prices and otherwise tanking the U.S. economy.

[...]

At a minimum, it appeared, this vote could have been used against Republicans in the 2026 elections to flip the House and Senate.

But then Sens. Brian Schatz, Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Kirsten Gillibrand, Angus King, Maggie Hassan, Gary Peters, Chuck Schumer, and Jeanne Shaheen broke from their Democratic colleagues to advance it.

These senators could have used the filibuster to demand that Republicans come to the table to negotiate a bipartisan agreement. Instead, they folded.

[...]

The condemnation from within the party was near-unanimous, and the critics included fellow members of Congress, who publicly laced into Senate Minority Leader Schumer in unusually harsh terms. In the House, the most revealing commentary was a non-comment. In response to separate questions asking if it was time for new leadership in the Senate, and if he had lost confidence in Schumer, House minority leader and fellow Brooklynite Hakeem Jeffries deflected each time, saying, “Next question.” The message was clear; take it from someone who has served with Hakeem.

It was worse in the upper chamber, where Senate Democrats are privately mulling replacing Schumer.

  Mondaire Jones @ The Bulwark

I'll believe it when I see it.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is already running ads accusing Sen. Jon Ossoff of voting to shut down the government. Now, because of Chuck Schumer and a few others, Sen. Ossoff will be unable to point to any policy concessions made by the Trump administration as a result of holding up the funding bill.

What a shit show.

Our central, defining task right now is to stand up to a lawless bully in the Oval Office. Even the federal workers who stood to be most directly impacted by a government shutdown understood this; the American Federation of Government Employees urged senators to vote against cloture.

[...]

The 2018 and 2020 cycles, during the first Trump presidency, saw an uptick in the number of bold, progressive candidates winning primary challenges in the Northeast and Midwest. Given the recent backlash to leftist policies, successful primary challengers in the 2026 and 2028 cycles (if we are fortunate to still have elections) will win by convincing voters not that they are more progressive, but that they will fight harder against Donald Trump and MAGA extremists than the out-of-touch incumbents they seek to replace.

[...]

Meanwhile, the discussion among Democrats about a 2028 primary challenge to Schumer by Reps. Pat Ryan or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has reached a fever pitch. (Schumer will be 78 and has served in office, starting in the New York State Assembly, since age 24.)