I want to share a few thoughts on what happened today in the Senate.
There was a steady drumbeat throughout the day of Senators coming out publicly or telling their constituents they not only opposed the House-produced continuing resolution (CR) but would move to block it on the cloture vote. There was an afternoon caucus meeting that was apparently heated and raucous. Sen. Gillibrand led the charge to allow the CR to go through. A shutdown was worse, she insisted. But behind all this Chuck Schumer was really the driver.
24 hours earlier Schumer went to floor and announced that Republicans didn’t have the votes for cloture. On first glance it appeared his caucus had decided to defy the President and his congressional party. But it was a ploy. He was playing his voters for fools. It soon emerged that Schumer plan was to engineer what amounted to a performative stand-down, a choreographed interlude of opposition followed by the passage of the GOP bill. It would go like this. Democrats refused to allow a vote on the GOP bill. They then force a compromise: we’ll vote for cloture in exchange for allowing us to offer amendments to the House bill. But that was a farce: giving up the Democrats one true point of leverage in exchange for votes that were literally certain to fail (Democrats are in the minority. On a majority vote they lose.) But over the next Schumer lost control of the situation. Too many people figured out how Schumer’s switcheroo maneuver worked. And too many Senate Democrats didn’t have the stomach for the public opposition to what was happening. That made the initial gambit impossible. So his only choice was to force the matter and late in the afternoon he went to the senate floor, not yet twenty-four hours later, and announced he would vote to give the Republicans their bill.
He had at least seven and probably two or three more yes votes in hand. And that was it. He’d wanted to keep his hands clean. But when that wasn’t possible he got them dirty. I don’t like to speak ill of the politically dead but Schumer is a weak man and a fool. This was the last chance, as Ed Kilgore argues here, at least until the fall and probably long after that for legislative intervention to stop Musk’s wilding spree through the federal government. In theory that will be another in the coming months when the debt ceiling needs to be renewed. But if you lack the stomach to risk a government shutdown you certainly won’t risk a debt default. Now the whole matter is in the hands of the courts, which will at best slow the process. And probably not by much.
There was a recognition up in the Senate yesterday that letting the bill pass was a bad idea but that was matched by a pained realization that wasn’t ready for the fight. They hadn’t laid any of the groundwork. They didn’t have a clear answer of what they’d be fighting for if a shutdown happened. They’d put their bets on Mike Johnson wouldn’t be able to get a bill through the House without Democratic votes. When he did, they were caught flatfooted. But the ‘they’ here is Chuck Schumer. That’s the leader’s job.
When you’re weak you only think about getting hurt. It not only constrains your actions. It shapes and limits what future possibilities you are able to imagine. It makes it impossible to see or consider the ways that acting and taking risks can change the playing field and create new possibilities. I think that’s what brought Chuck Schumer to this moment. None of us know the future. So disagreements are inevitable. What was unforgivable was Schumer’s trying to hoodwink his supporters yesterday.
Yesterday staffers were consoling each other and outside supporters with the argument that history is clear: parties that overreach like this get walloped in midterm elections. It may surprise you to hear that I think they’re right. For weeks I’ve thought that by a narrowly electoral calculus it’s probably the better move for the Democrats to simply get out of the way. The problem is that by the time Democrats have any chance at power again the federal government will be unrecognizable, a smoldering heap of faits accompli. In his justification speech this afternoon Schumer said that “for Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift.” To this we have to assume that doing precisely what Trump demands amounts to some kind of ingenious counterstrike. I doubt that’s true.
There are a few very sharp people who disagree with my take on this. One of them is Adam Jentleson. He’s no softie. Adam is the dean filibuster reformers. He says a shutdown is a gift to DOGE. It just gives them more power, more people hurt. I disagree with that, for the reasons I’ve outlined in this and other recent posts. But keep an eye on what Adam says. (Always listen to the smartest people who disagree with you.) He says that “The fight is the midterms and every election from now til then.” That’s right. But again, we need to slow down the destruction as much as we can before those elections start to bear fruit. Because the government Dems might semi-inherit in 2027 will be unrecognizable otherwise. And we’re a dozen or more hours from relinquishing the one real point of leverage all year.
There’s still time to make your voice heard.
