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Why does being a Democrat so often feel like you start on your own 25-yard line, but Republicans start on your 25 too?
Like, no matter how weak, corrupt, incompetent, cruel, or unpopular the GOP is, Democratic “Leaders” turn them into Bruce Lee and make us fight with one arm and both legs tied behind our backs?
It is exhausting, dispiriting, and strategically stupid. I’ll describe the ways the eight Democratic Senators who betrayed their oaths and promises, clearly at the behest of Schumer (I’ll explain that too), were dumber than dirt to capitulate now.
Dirt sprinkled with Rush Limbaugh’s ashes.
But first, let’s make clear that this is one of the big reasons I had the conversation above with Malcolm Nance. It was last Thursday evening.
A Congress Of The American Crisis - Malcolm Nance & Cliff Schecter
We discussed a convention—something like The Right’s CPAC—but without speakers and an audience resembling characters from The Hills Have Eyes—to create a platform that would be like a Project 2027. It, of course, would have a snappier name, like Moon Unit Zappa or CPAC (Constitutional Political Action Committee).
We all come together in s springtime in Philly (no symbolism…great cheesesteaks!) to massively reform institutions that should be in receivership (Supreme Court), create new ones we’ve lacked (feds, as part of the Secret Service, charged with arresting a President if a judge orders it, so we don’t have an OK Corral in the West Wing).
Also, more checks and balances, such as the Attorney General’s independence from the President, by not having the President appoint them. This would happen via a constitutional amendment to elect AGs separately or appoint them via an independent body. They’re not the President’s lawyer, but “the people’s lawyer.”
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Finally, we would need something akin to a Truth & Reconciliation Committee like South Africa had after apartheid.
We can’t just move on after the astonishing corruption, broken laws, besmirched constitutional principles, and acquiescence and/or bribe-taking by electeds, judiciary appointees, corporate media, monopolies, law firms, academic institutions, etc. If you enabled this, and especially if you participated, you don’t get to “look forward.”
This would ensure our future. But what will ensure our today after our betrayal by eight Senate Democrats and our Democratic Senate “Leader?”
Schumer’s Surrender: Democrats Had the Leverage — and Folded
They had every tool. They had the narrative. They were sitting on a shutdown that, paradoxically, was helping them. And, yes, we know Trump was holding back SNAP, but he was doing it illegally, as a court ordered him to disperse the funds.
He is a geriatric serial killer with cerebral gangrene; he will always take a hostage, and if we give in every time, we all lose. This should be self-evident.
Yet nothing but lying prone in front of Trump seems to be self-evident to Schumer. So let’s do a summary, and if I have to send it to him in crayon because he can’t seem to take yes for an answer, sure, why not?
According to The Atlantic, the shutdown was actually putting massive pressure on Trump, like his thighs when he does one squat. He was getting blamed, as his cult controls the whole government, the economy is stalling, regular s*t, ya know, food, suddenly costs A LOT, and word is the Epstein files will resemble Debbie Does Dallas.
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So, shockingly, Trump’s approval has been crashing, with even Fox finding him at 36%, or resembling the warm feelings America has for pubic lice…or Carrot-Top. Hell, the Fox-ers seemed like they were sniffing Gorilla Glue just to get through the past week.
And why was that? Because they had to announce live all night last Tuesday that Trump was getting his electoral arse handed to him in stunning fashion. It’s actually quite hard to overstate what happened.
We won the Governor’s office in swing Virginia by 16 points, and we won two non-federal statewide races (for public utility officer) in Georgia by 24 points each. We hadn’t won a non-federal statewide race in Georgia since 2006.
New Jersey elected Mikie Sherrill by a whopping 13% even though Democrats were in control of everything locally, and people were in a change kinda mood. Mamdani in New York City…what do you even need to say? Maine voted overwhelmingly to protect voter rights and regulate guns. The list goes on and on and on.
And yet a handful of Senate Democrats, so-called “centrist Democrats,” which, if I’m correct, is defined by Merriam Webster as “do you dumb*ss galoots ever try to actually win?,” handed a stopgap deal to the GOP anyway. It’s literally folding with a straight flush.
**This is also where we take a second to say there are many great Democrats among our elected officials, and they’re getting better, fighting harder all the time. This is our party, there are more of us, and we will take it from its current flaccid leadership.
For example, the grassroots knows where it’s at. It’s just this shrinking collection of been-there-forever-and-billionaire-funded doofuses who we need to move onto other things. Sadly, as they have seniority, our leadership doesn’t represent most of us.
Yet, Dick Durbin is leaving, thank Jeebus. Maybe we could get George W. Bush to call Schumer and see if he can interest him in some painting in the bathtub?
Because it’s pretty obvious Schumer planned this betrayal. The tell here, as it were, is that none of the eight defectors were facing re-election in 2026; Two are retiring from the Senate, and the rest magically don’t have reelection until 2028 or 2030. Wow, that sounds so unorganized, so spur of the moment!
But wait, there’s more! Julie Roginsky reported that Schumer did it to protect the filibuster, which Trump has been pressuring Republicans to ditch so they can open the government without making any concessions. I’m sorry, but are you f*king kidding me?
I’ve heard similar rumblings, and as the filibuster is an accident of history. Unconstitutional, as the Constitution makes the Senate a majority-controlled body. It was created by Alexander-Hamilton murdering Aaron Burr.
Oh, and it was used to block Civil Rights for 80 years, and by Mitch McConnell to steal the Supreme Court and block everything Democrats have ever wanted to do…
If this is accurate, Chuck Schumer is even a bigger dolt of a leader than I thought he was. But there is a reason beyond what I or Julie have heard to believe this is it. Schumer recruited Maine Governor Janet Mills to get into the Senate race against Susan Collins.
What did Mills promptly say when she got in? She would vote to protect the filibuster. Something virtually every Democrat wants gone. Data points, my friends.
What’s more corrosive is how swiftly the fallout is hitting the caucus. Politico reports that nearly every major 2026 Democratic Senate candidate has slammed the deal as a betrayal of the party’s base and abdication of leverage just after massive off-year wins.
And it would seem Representative Ro Khanna has come to the same conclusion as I have, Julie has, and just about every other Democrat with a functioning cerebral cortex: that it’s Schumer. But we should thank Khanna, because he chose to say it out loud:
“Schumer is no longer effective,” said Reps. Ro Khanna and others on X.
As Khanna rightfully makes clear, this wasn’t a moment of strategic flexibility; it was a politically avoidable collapse of will.
Think of it this way, one of the Senators who voted with the eight, Tim Kaine, is from Virginia. Besides winning everything there last Tuesday, we won 65 seats in the House of Delegates. That not only blew away our previous record of 54 delegates for Democrats, we now have a supermajority in that body.
What about Pennsylvania? We won three Supreme Court seats on Tuesday overwhelmingly. Oh, and here’s a nice little data point: We won the Bucks County, PA District Attorney’s race. No biggie, Democrats have won it before. In 1891.
Yeah, that was the last time. Such was our overperformance in Pennsylvania, which John Fetterman betrayed just a few days later to be one of the eight turncoats.
Turns out Fetterman is actually the guy you thought he would be when you first took a look at him.
There are real consequences here. Not dramatic theater, but political arithmetic. Primary challenges, donor realignment, grassroots organizing around accountability. Government workers lost pay for all that time for absolutely nothing. What an insult.
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Even the “promise” they got of a vote on Obamacare subsidies from Republican Senate leader John Thune is a joke. They didn’t get him to agree to an ironclad vote today. Or tomorrow. Just “sometime in November or December.” Gee, Chuck, can you represent the buyer when I choose to sell my house?
Oh, and also, Mike Johnson didn’t agree to anything, so the House can just never vote on it. Well done, Schumer, crafty minx, you.
This was a betrayal of leverage and of the people who believed the party would fight. So we need to respond accordingly. As I said, we have all the grassroots energy from the record-breaking No Kings rally two weeks ago to the election last week.
So the response can’t just be “well, we’ll do better next time.” It must be: we make this painful. We use independent media and every other leverage point to make the cost of folding higher. To make the internal discipline of those who betray our values visible.
And most of all? We make leadership accountable. We remove Schumer from leadership. Because if Democrats want to have that tsunami election in 2026, which the republic may need to survive, we must move beyond slogans and tweets.
And the only way we do that is by elevating that next generation, those who get it, will fight for it, don’t fill their calendar with billionaire dinners. We’re so close, my friends.
It’s time for us, unlike Chuck Schumer, to close the deal.

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