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There are 47 Senate Democrats. Replacing Chuck Schumer as minority leader and Dick Durbin as whip would require just 24 votes. Schumer voted against the deal, but he is the leader, and he’s supposed to be able to prevent seven rogue senators from commandeering party strategy. Either he lost control of the caucus, or (more likely) he and the caucus support the cave in the lame tradition of “vote no, hope yes.” It discredits him either way.
Sadly, I don’t believe anyone who isn’t already in the leadership pipeline wants the job. The only person with the elusive combination of cross-caucus credibility and a clear eyed view of the fight against fascism is Chris Murphy, and he wants to be president, not Senate minority leader.
The failure isn’t presumptively just on Schumer and the seven-plus rank-and-file senators who voted to cave. Assuming there are no consequences for the leadership failure, it’s also on the rest of the caucus. Someone should step up, and 23 more should be willing to support a leadership challenge. If that doesn’t happen, the bar for supporting a primary challenge against every Senate Democrat should fall.
He didn’t have much support to begin with, but I suspect every Democrat already running for Senate will announce opposition to Schumer’s continued leadership.
Democratic capitulators whose seats would be filled by Democratic governors in the event of vacancy (Durbin, Fetterman, Kaine, King) should be under immense pressure to resign mid-session. Now, even. If your senator fits that bill, get loud.
Moderate factionalists have a long way to go to convince people that policy moderation doesn’t select for risk aversion, and, thus, lack of fight. ...
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