By BEN R. WILLIAMS
From the desk of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
My fellow Democrats,
Sen. Chuck Schumer here. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in Washington, D.C., and I realize that many of you probably want some clarity on what exactly happened with the government shutdown.
Let me start by saying that the Democratic Party has recently experienced some unbelievable wins and faced some devastating challenges. The Nov. 4 elections offered up a Democratic blue wave and a fiery repudiation of President Donald Trump. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill proved that moderate Democrats who would have passed for Republicans 50 years ago still have a place in American politics.
Of course, our party also suffered a devastating loss when Zohran Mamdani proved that Democrats are willing to vote for someone who is exciting and offers hope for a better tomorrow. That’s obviously not what the Democratic Party is about, and hopefully we can move on quickly and return to the comforting embrace of the status quo.
But I mainly wanted to talk to you today about the government shutdown. To briefly summarize, the federal government was shut down for 40 days because the Republicans wanted to do away with Affordable Care Act subsidies. Should those subsidies expire, 24 million Americans will face skyrocketing health insurance costs next year.
Millions of people were about to lose their healthcare, and we, the Senate Democrats, refused to give up on them. We refused to pass a budget that didn’t have protections for our most vulnerable citizens.
We held strong. We presented a united front. We fought for you.
But then, of course, things got kind of hard and people were mean to us, and what can you do, am I right?
Look at me: a man doesn’t resemble Henry Kissinger this closely unless he knows a thing or two about negotiating. So when I heard that Democratic Sens. Catherine Masto, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Angus King, Jacky Rosen, Jeanne Shaheen, and John “Fee Fie Fo Fum” Fetterman were thinking about folding like Superman on laundry day, I had a lot of thinking to do.
Obviously, I voted against the deal. And I want to point out that it’s crazy to think that I went behind closed doors and asked these eight moderate Democrats to take the fall since they weren’t up for re-election. It’s also not true that as Senate Minority Leader, I have lost all control of my own party. The truth is a third thing in the middle of those two that makes me look good.
But look, I get their reasons. Yes, we all want to fight for your precious little health insurance that keep you alive, but have you ever considered how annoying it is to get phone calls day and night from major corporate donors who are all snippy because our airports are collapsing? It gets old fast, let me tell you.
Some people want to frame the end of this shutdown as “the single biggest failure of a party lately defined by failure arriving at a time when they actually had some momentum.” To that I say, people also criticized British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he ceded a big chunk of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938, but you know what? Seven years later, Hitler was dead, and all’s well that ends well.
Look at it this way: if the Democrats had stood firm, you could have kept your health insurance. But by giving up and letting the Republicans take your health insurance away from you, we have something really solid to campaign on during the midterms! I know that’s going to drive a lot of folks to the polls. The survivors, anyway.
The Democratic Party is a lot like the Starz subscription you bought six years ago so you could marathon “Ash vs. Evil Dead” and then forgot to cancel: our mission is to coast along on your fond memories of things we did many years earlier and hope that you continue to support us even if we don’t have anything particularly exciting to offer. Your half-hearted, vaguely resentful support is what we live for.
The main thing I want you to take away is this: for too long, there has been a narrative that moderate corporate Democrats in positions of power are only looking out for ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not a party that looks inward; it looks outward. So believe me when I say that when we absolutely fumbled our massive leverage during the shutdown, we weren’t failing ourselves; we were failing YOU.
And you’re welcome.
