(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Anger At Schumer Dems is Resisting Autocracy [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-18
Yeah, more non-tech politics. I know, but politics matter. How we order ourselves matters. Deciding if everyone is subject to the laws or only the disfavored few matters. It matters for what you can say, what you can do, how much of a person as opposed to a cog in the machine you and your kids can be. And those issues have never mattered more in my lifetime than right now.
After last week’s refusal to force a government shut down, many, many, many people were enraged at Minority Leader Schumer and the Democratic Senators that went along with him. Almost immediately, people started complaining that the real anger should be for Trump and Musk, that they are the ones doing the bad things, and that the Democrats have no recourse given their current position in the government. Being mad at Schumer is just splitting the opposition. Except that Schumer has been splitting the opposition with his complete lack of planning.
The worst thing about the shut down fight was Schumer’s obvious incompetency. He first went on the floor of the Senate and said that the counting resolution to keep the government open was bad and that there were not the votes for the measure. The next day he personally came out against stopping the measure and says that, no, sorry, the measure is needed or things will get worse. So, son, which is it? He presented no facts that had changed between the two days. It really just appears that he thought he could get away with the “yes on advancing, no on the vote” nonsense and fool his voters. It was insulting, but it also reeked of desperation and improvisation.
I am not married to the idea that a shutdown was the best plan. I believe, given the evidence and arguments in front of us, that it was, but I am not so arrogant as to think I can predict the future. maybe, as Josh Barro says, the Dems would have had to fold and thing would be worse. I doubt it, but its always possible. But then Schumer should have been planning for that step for weeks. He and his caucus should have laid the groundwork, had the arguments, made the case. If they had done that, if they had a pan for slowing Trump and Musk down outside the budget shutdown, then most people would have been accepting, if not thrilled, with the outcome. That they had no plan, that they still cannot tell us where they are headed, how they intend to fight, is the real reason to be furious and Schumer and demand his ouster.
Schumer gave an interview to the New York Times after his actions, and it shows the flaws in Schumer’s thinking. He honestly believes that Senate Republicans will distance themselves from Trump when his numbers fall, and that Trump’s numbers will fall on their own. Even if you believe that, the damage they are doing to the government and to universities and to science in this country is going to be hard to reverse if left unchecked. More importantly, I don’t think that Schumer sees Trumps actions as all that disturbing.
In the interview, he refuses to fully condemn Trump’s taking grants away from Columbia University, thinks that anything done in Gaza could not be genocide since Israel was provoked, and he refuses to outright condemn his disappearing of a green card holder, Kahli. Schumer doesn’t care about the illegality of these actions, the assault on the rule of law and freedom of expression they represent. Schumer only seems to care that Khali, who as leader of the protests said multiple times that any anti-semitism was wrong, and Columbia University, which itself cracked down extremely harshly on the protests, be punished for what he perceives to be wrong thought. And he seems to see Trump as an ally in that endeavor.
He also likely does not see the problem with DOGE. Schumer is the Senator from Wall Street, after all. He has been likely hearing form those donors, donors that would love top privatize more government functions, get their hands on Social security money to play the Wall Street casino with, and get pesky investigations and regulations out of the way of their making money. He likely approves of some of these cuts and just as likely doesn’t fully understand the damage a lot of these cuts are doing, since he’s been encased in the Senate bubble for decades.
And those beliefs, in and of themselves, while wrong, are not a problem. Believing that Colombia didn’t handle the protests correctly or that Khali may be antisemitic or that DOGE has some good ideas, are not the real issue, no matter who wrong they in fact are. The problem is that Schumer appears to be letting those beliefs, coupled with his rock solid conviction that we are operating in normal politics, dictate his actions. Instead of understanding that DOGE is usurping the power of the purse from Congress and ignoring laws passed by Congress, instead of understanding that the President does not have the power to unilaterally remove grants approved by Congress, instead of understanding that an Administration that disappears one class of people they disagree with will eventually start disappearing all classes of people they disagree with, Schumer sees his enemies being punished, his donors happy, and shrugs.
Schumer has no plan for effective resistance, in part, I think, because he approves of some of the actions of the Administration and in part because he thinks this is a function of normal politics that he can ride out and reverse later. Ends are not all that matters. In the words of A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
Means matter, because the means are what decide if we live free and secure or unfree and subject to the whim of an autocrat. Schumer does not appear to understand that at worst, or believes he can fight creeping authoritarianism by waiting for people who have never broken with Trump to break with trump in less than six months at best. There will be no effective push back with Schumer as he is now. That is why sidelining him or pushing him to be more effective and aggressive is a necessary, if unfortunate, component in resisting the country’s slide into competitive authoritarianism.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/18/2310754/-Anger-At-Schumer-Dems-is-Resisting-Autocracy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
