Tag Archives: schumer

This Is What Democrats Have to Gain From Filibustering Gorsuch

by NicholaSteger Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Speaking to a gathering of Democratic donors in late March, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) gamed out the perils of filibustering Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the US Supreme Court, whose confirmation is scheduled for a Senate vote on Thursday afternoon. McCaskill imagined a scenario—one that is barreling toward becoming reality—in which Republicans remove the 60-vote threshold necessary to confirm nominees to the Supreme Court.

“They confirm either Gorsuch or they confirm the one after Gorsuch,” she explained, according to audio that was later leaked to the Kansas City Star “Then, God forbid, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, or Anthony Kennedy retires or Stephen Breyer has a stroke or is no longer able to serve. Then we’re not talking about Scalia for Scalia, which is what Gorsuch is, we’re talking about Scalia for somebody on the court who shares our values. And then all of a sudden the things I fought for with scars on my back to show for it in this state are in jeopardy.”

McCaskill’s warning echoes the case made by several academics in the past few days: It’s better to save the filibuster for another day when, perhaps, moderate Republicans would help Democrats keep the arcane Senate rule that makes it possible for a minority party to prevent a vote from occurring if it doesn’t get the support of 60 members of the chamber, effectively killing a bill or a Supreme Court nomination. But last Friday, McCaskill, a vulnerable Democrat up for reelection next year in a state Trump won by double digits, announced she would join her Democratic colleagues in filibustering Gorsuch. Her decision, to join every Senate Democrat but three to oppose Gorsuch and dare Republicans to end the filibuster, raises a puzzling question: Given the possibly terrifying likelihood that awaits progressives if they lose the filibuster—not just with Trump’s Supreme Court nominee this time, but also with future fights—what’s the upside?

Some fear there is none, and that the Democratic Party is rushing toward a decision it will likely regret, at the behest of the party’s progressive and increasingly powerful base. A filibuster “prevents a revolt by the base—it’s the base here that’s not being smart,” said a political consultant who asked not to be named because of a client list that includes Democratic senators. The small donor base and activist core of the party “have boxed these folks in to a position that is not the wisest one.”

The pressure began in early March, when progressive groups issued a warning to Senate Democrats for being what they saw as too soft on Gorsuch. “We need you to do better,” a coalition led by NARAL Pro-Choice America wrote in a letter. Indivisible, a new grassroots group that helps people organize locally and contact their representatives, drafted a script for activists to use when calling members of Congress. And the Progressive Campaign Change Committee has been vigilant in going after senators who were slow to get on the filibuster train. An email sent out to the group’s listserv in Vermont, for example, attacked Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a stalwart liberal, for saying he’s “not inclined to filibuster.” The email urged constituents to call Leahy and get him to commit to filibustering. “Voting against the filibuster is the same as voting for Gorsuch,” the email said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who’s best known as a dealmaker rather than as a progressive stalwart, “is not really in a position to go to these people and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t really this important, this other one is,’ because that triggers the very response he’s trying to avoid,” the consultant explained. As with virtually every other Democrat, Schumer does not want to invite the anger of the base by stopping a filibuster. The decision to oppose Gorsuch, and to let Republicans put an end to the filibuster entirely, the consultant said, is more about survival today than long-term planning.

Tad Devine, who served as chief strategist on Bernie Sanders‘ insurgent presidential campaign, considers the base to be the major reason that Democrats should filibuster. To avoid it “would have been a signal that Democrats were willing to engage in business as usual and not willing to mount principled opposition to Trump” and his nominee, he explained.

Devine is looking forward to the midterm elections in 2018. In the past two midterm cycles, Democrats have struggled to turn out their voters and Republicans have won huge victories, taking over dozens of state capitals and governors’ mansions, even in blue states. If Democrats didn’t take up this fight, he said, they would demoralize their base and risk losing the momentum they have today. “We don’t want people who are now coming into the political process, engaging so strongly in support of the Democrats and their opposition to Trump, to be disheartened,” he said. “For Democrats not to do this would have been a potentially catastrophic mistake.”

Beyond the issue of the base, some progressives see more potential upsides in triggering the nuclear option. “This is an exercise of a raw political power grab, and the hope is that the American people see that for what it is in coming elections,” said Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy for America, a progressive group that is supportive of Democrats’ current strategy of filibustering Gorsuch. This is a position echoed by Schumer himself. When asked at a press conference Tuesday what would happen if Republicans ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, he responded, “They will lose if they do it.” That’s because the voters will see that McConnell “will do anything to get his way,” and Republicans will not be seen as acting in a reasonable or bipartisan fashion. In the long term, Sroka believes progressives will be better off without the filibuster hindering their own nominees when, perhaps after the 2020 elections, Democrats are in a position to pick the next nominee.

All these potential upsides are worth the risk of losing the filibuster, because McCaskill’s hope that Republicans won’t remove the filibuster in a future Supreme Court battle is a fantasy. “There is a fiction that the filibuster isn’t already dead,” says Sroka. “Any vote that Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans take is really just the icing on the cake—this thing has been cooked since Senate Republicans defied any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama.”

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This Is What Democrats Have to Gain From Filibustering Gorsuch

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Schumer’s Opposition Is Good News for the Iran Deal

by ElizaSKCVk Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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In other news, Chuck Schumer announced yesterday that he would oppose the Iran nuclear deal. Since Schumer is a longtime friend of Israel and an influential guy among Democrats, this is seen as a big deal. But I don’t think it is. Here’s why:

He announced just as Congress was going into recess.
This means he has a good excuse for not twisting arms over the next few weeks, but can still meet with donors and voters without having lots of awkward discussions about why he hasn’t come out against the deal.
He also waited until Democratic support for the deal was nearly airtight. At this point, Schumer would have to persuade virtually every undecided Dem to vote No in order to kill the deal.
And just for good measure, he made a low-key announcement on the same day that the big Republican debate dominated the news cycle.

To me, this has the smell of someone who wants to oppose the deal, but doesn’t really want to kill it. Schumer will go through the motions when Congress reconvenes, but I suspect he won’t be trying all that hard to undermine support for a deal negotiated by his party’s president. Far from taking this as bad news, I’d say it’s a very good sign that the Iran deal will survive when it goes to Congress.

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Schumer’s Opposition Is Good News for the Iran Deal

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Forget Elizabeth Warren. Another Female Senator Has a Shot to Fill the Senate’s New Power Vacuum.

by RogelioUnderwood Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

In the nanoseconds after Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid announced Friday morning that he will give up his leadership post and retire in 2016, liberal groups raced to promote their go-to solution for almost any political problem: Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Much like the movement to draft Warren for president, the idea of putting her in charge of the Democratic caucus was more dream than reality. Warren’s office has already said she won’t run, and as Vox‘s Dylan Matthews explains, putting Warren in charge of the Democratic caucus would prevent her from holding her colleagues accountable when they stray too far from progressive ideals.

Instead, Reid’s likely replacement is New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who already has endorsements from Reid and Dick Durbin, the outgoing minority leader’s No. 2. But lefties have long been wary of Schumer, who, thanks to his home base in New York City, is far more sympathetic to Wall Street than the rest of his caucus. And lost in the Warren hype is another female senator: Washington’s Patty Murray.

As caucus secretary, Murray is the fourth-ranking member of Senate Democratic leadership, behind Reid, Durbin, and Schumer. If she decides to take on Schumer for Reid’s job, Murray could be the first woman to serve as a party leader in the US Senate. Murray’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether she’d run for the job and, besides a general statement praising Reid, was notably quiet on Friday.

In 2013, I cowrote a profile of Murray for The American Prospect looking at her role in leading Democrats’ negotiations with Republicans on the budget, and explained how she’s a pragmatic progressive who will push for the most liberal policies she can pass while still being willing to forge compromise with the centrists in her party:

There’s something peculiarly undefined about Murray’s ideology. She’s a liberal, a West Coast liberal to be precise: strong on social issues, the environment, workers’ rights, and the government’s role in society. She hews closely to the Democratic talking points of the day. But it’s hard to discern a coherent vision or theory behind her views. She is as far left as you can go without alienating the centrists in the party. More than anything, she’s a pragmatist. Success trumps belief in the “right” things. At the same time, Murray doesn’t venerate moderation for its own sake—she’s no Rahm Emanuel. “She’s a strong progressive,” says a former Budget Committee staff member, “but she won’t tilt at windmills, she won’t force a vote on something she knows she’s not going to win.”

Murray certainly has the résumé to compete for the job. She led the Democrats’ campaign arm in 2012, when the party picked up two Senate seats, defying pundits’ predictions. She forged a budget agreement with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in 2013 that averted across-the-board budget cuts. Murray is generally press-shy—she flies home across the country each weekend instead of doing the Sunday show circuit—which would leave room for other Senate stars, including Warren, to be the party’s public face while Murray controls the behind-the-scenes negotiations. But as that budget committee staffer told me in 2013, Murray isn’t known for picking fights she can’t win. If she runs against Schumer, it’ll be because she thinks she has a real shot at Reid’s post.

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Forget Elizabeth Warren. Another Female Senator Has a Shot to Fill the Senate’s New Power Vacuum.

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Tell Me, Chuck: What Should Dems Do To Win Back the Middle Class?

by EltonUfdutqsxc Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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A longtime reader writes: “Hope you’ll weigh in on Edsall on Schumer and the Dems ‘destroying’ the party over Obamacare.”

Well, OK. But I don’t have an awful lot to say. Basically, Sen. Chuck Schumer thinks it was a mistake to focus on Obamacare in 2009. Instead, Democrats should have focused like a laser on the economy, and in particular, on helping the working and middle classes. Instead, Dems passed yet another social welfare program that mostly helps the poor, demonstrating yet again that they don’t really care much about the middle class.

Yesterday, Tom Edsall weighed in on this. He didn’t really take a political position of his own, but he did present a bunch of evidence that Schumer was substantively correct. That is, Obamacare really does help mainly the poor, and Democrats really have done very little for the middle class lately.

So what’s my view? Well, I’ve written about this before, and I’d say that on a technical level Edsall is exactly right. Obamacare does help the working and middle classes a bit, partly because its subsidies are available even to those with relatively high incomes and partly because of its other provisions. For example, its guarantee that you can get affordable coverage even if you have a preexisting condition is something that helps everyone. If you’re middle class and you lose your job, that provision of Obamacare might be a lifesaver.

Still, there’s no question that Obamacare helps the middle classes only at the margins. Most of them already have employer health coverage, and the ones that end up buying coverage through the exchanges get only small subsidies. I happen to think that Obamacare will eventually be the foundation for a program of universal health care that genuinely appeals to everyone, the same way that Social Security does, but that’s in the future. It doesn’t really help Democrats now.

So I agree with Edsall about the technical distribution of Obamacare benefits. And I also agree with Schumer that Democrats need to do more to appeal to the working and middle classes. So that means I agree with their basic critique. Right?

Nope. Not even slightly. You see, the core of the critique isn’t merely that Democrats should do more for the middle class. It’s specifically that Democrats should have done more in 2009 for the middle class. But this is the point at which everything suddenly gets hazy. What should Obama have done in lieu of Obamacare? Paul Krugman has it exactly right:

When people say that Obama should have “focused” on the economy, what, specifically, are they saying he should have done?….What do they mean? Obama should have gone around squinting and saying “I’m focused on the economy”? What would that have done?

Look, governing is not just theater. For sure the weakness of the recovery has hurt Democrats. But “focusing”, whatever that means, wouldn’t have delivered more job growth. What should Obama have done that he actually could have done in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition? And how, if at all, did health reform stand in the way of doing whatever it is you’re saying he should have done?

In broad terms, I agree with Schumer’s critique. Democrats need to do more to appeal the working and middle classes, not just the poor. But Schumer is maddeningly vague about just what that means. And as it relates to 2009, in particular, he’s full of hot air. In the first few months of the year, Obama passed a big stimulus. He rescued the auto industry. He cut everyone’s payroll taxes.

Should Obama have done more? Oh my, yes. His pivot to the deficit in mid-2009 was dumb. And by far the biggest smoking gun of unfinished business was something to rescue underwater homeowners. But let’s be serious: even if Obama had supported a broad rescue effort, it wouldn’t have mattered. Congress wasn’t on board, and I doubt very much that anything could have gotten them on board. The politics was just too toxic. Never forget that the mere prospect of maybe rescuing underwater homeowners was the issue that set off Rick Santelli’s famous CNBC rant and led to the formation of the tea party movement. I wish things were otherwise, but bailing out underwater homeowners was simply never in the cards.

Beyond that, Democrats have a much bigger problem than even Schumer acknowledges. It’s this: what can they do? That is, what big ticket items are left that would buy the loyalty of the middle class for another generation? We already have Social Security and Medicare. We have Obamacare. We have the mortgage interest deduction. What’s left?

There are smallish things. Sometime people point to college loans. Or universal pre-K. I’m in favor of those things. But college loans are a stopgap, and the truth is that the rising price of college for the middle class is mainly a state issue, not a federal one. And universal pre-K simply doesn’t yet have enough political support. (It’s also something that would most likely benefit the poor much more than the middle class, but leave that aside for the moment.)

So I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked before. I’m all in favor of using the power of government to help the middle classes. But what does that mean in terms of concrete political programs that (a) the middle class will associate with Democrats and help win them loyalty and votes, and (b) have even a snowball’s chance of getting passed by Congress? Expansion of Social Security? Expansion of Medicare? Bigger subsidies for Obamacare? Universal pre-K? A massive infrastructure program? Let’s get specific, and let’s not nibble around the edges. Little programs here and there aren’t going to make much difference to the Democrats’s political fortunes. Nor will heroic but vague formulations about rescuing unions or raising taxes on the wealthy by a few points.

So tell me. What should they have done in 2009 that was actually feasible? What should they do now? Let’s hear it.

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Tell Me, Chuck: What Should Dems Do To Win Back the Middle Class?

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