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"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership," said the head of Our Revolution.
Since Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined a handful of Democrats in voting for a GOP-backed continuing resolution that cuts nondefense spending by $13 billion and keeps the government open through September, the lawmaker from New York has taken heat from members of his own caucus and liberal groups—and survey data from the group Our Revolution shows that progressive voters are unhappy with him, too.
Our Revolution, the progressive political organizing group launched as a continuation of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that it surveyed 9,024 of its members between March 17-18 and found that nearly 90% of respondents believe Schumer should step aside as Senate minority leader and 86% would support a primary challenger against Schumer for his Senate seat, should he refuse to step aside.
The respondents are a subset of Our Revolution's grassroots network, according to the group, and they "include rank-in-file Democratic Party activists and base voters, many of whom supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the 2020 presidential primary."
When given the opportunity to submit open-ended responses, survey respondents expressed things like: "Wildly frustrated and defeated" and "We need an opposition party, the Democrats are anything but!"
"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership at a time of unprecedented executive overreach and corporate takeover of the American federal government," said Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution.
"It is an utter disgrace that Schumer and other top Democrats cannot muster up the courage to actively resist. It's time to step up or step down," said Geevarghese.
On Thursday, Schumer announced his intention to support the bill, which was a pivot from his position earlier that week when he advocated for an extension in order to negotiated a compromise. The pivot drew sharp backlash, including from House Democrats, who had largely been united in opposing the measure when it cleared that chamber on March 11.
On Friday, the Senate voted 62-38, with 10 members of the Democratic caucus in favor, to advance the funding bill and avoid a government shutdown.
Our Revolution found that 83% of respondents would support primary challengers against those 10 senators.
In addition to steeps cuts to items such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's community development, rental assistance, and homelessness services programs, the bill also lacks the specific congressional instructions to allocate funds for programs that are generally included in spending bills, according to The New York Times. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the party's top appropriator, warned that because of this, the bill turns "turns many of our accounts into slush funds."
There were other signs that this was not a typical shutdown fight.
Everett Kelley, president of the nation's largest federal workers union—the American Federation of Government Employees—wrote in a letter to senators last week that AFGE's position "until this year has been that although continuing resolutions are far from ideal, they are better than an outright government shutdown."
"This year is different," Kelley wrote. "The Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated over the last seven weeks that it will not spend appropriated funds as the law dictates."
After Schumer's pivot, a number of progressives loudly condemned the move. The grassroots group Indivisible released a statement calling for him to step aside as Senate minority leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told reporters that there is a "deep sense of outrage and betrayal" from House Democrats following Schumer's about-face.
The episode also sparked murmurs among some Democrats that Ocasio-Cortez should consider a primary bid against Schumer in 2028.
Schumer has defended his decision to stave off a government shutdown, casting it as the less bad option of the two bad options that Senate Democrats were faced with, according to The New York Times.
The recent race for DNC chair raises questions about how the progressive wing of the party can and should move forward toward 2028.
Just before starting to write my lament about what a dramatic step backward the recent campaign for Democratic National Committee chair had been, I opened an Our Revolution email that told me, “We beat back the party establishment at the DNC.”
Now Our Revolution being a direct organizational descendent of the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and me having been a 2016 Sanders convention delegate, I feel pretty confident that our ideas of who “we” means are pretty much the same. So what accounts for the widely divergent takes?
For those who haven’t been following this, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin was just elected to lead the DNC for the next four years, defeating Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler by a 246.5–134.5 vote margin. There was no contested election four years ago, because by tradition a just-elected president selects the new chair; contested elections generally follow defeats. In the last one, in 2017, former Obama administration Secretary of Labor Tom Perez won the job, beating Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison in a second round of voting, 235--200.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign.
Ellison’s candidacy came in the wake of his having been just the second member of Congress to support Sanders in the prior year’s presidential primaries, and the fact that Sanders people harbored serious grievances with the DNC over its perceived favoritism for the ultimate nominee, Hillary Clinton, lent a distinct edge to the election, bringing it considerably more buzz than the one that just occurred. At the time, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a vociferous opponent of Sanders’ run—who had once declared, “The most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals... is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year”—now thought there was “a great deal to be said for putting an active Sanders supporter in there,” so as to clear the air “of suspicions and paranoia.” But Clinton and Barack Obama apparently didn’t think so, and Clinton’s past Obama cabinet colleague, Perez, took up the torch in a race that produced a level of grassroots involvement seldom if ever before seen in this contest.
Although the office is traditionally considered organizational rather than ideological and the 2017 candidates did run on those issues, the underlying political differences were obvious to all. This time around, the race was generally understood to involve little if any political disagreement on the issues. By way of explaining its support for new party chair Martin, Our Revolution characterized runner-up Wikler, as “an establishment candidate backed by Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer, and bankrolled by the billionaire class.” We understand that election campaigns are about sharpening the perception of differences between the candidates, but still this seems a rather thin, flimsy basis for hailing the vote as an anti-establishment triumph, given that Martin has publicly stated that he doesn’t want the party to take money from "those bad billionaires" only from "good billionaires;”and one of the two billionaires who gave a quarter million dollars to Wikler’s campaign was George Soros—probably the DNC’s model “good billionaire.” Besides Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg probably aren’t thinking of donating anyhow. Oh, and Chuck Schumer actually supported Ellison eight years ago.
Actually, “we” did have a horse in the race—2020 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. Shakir, who has been running a nonprofit news organization called More Perfect Union, dedicated to “building power for the working class,” argued that Democrats needed a pitch for building a pro-worker economy to go with their criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy proposals. His viewpoint presented a serious alternative to that of Martin, who told a candidates forum that “we’ve got the right message... What we need to do is connect it back with the voters,”—seemingly a tough position to maintain following an election in which NBC’s 20-state exit polling showed the majority of voters with annual household incomes under $100,000 voting Republican, while the majority of those from over-$100,000 households voted Democrat. But even though Shakir was a DNC member and thereby able to get the 40 signatures of committee members needed to run, he entered the race far too late to be taken for a serious contender and ultimately received but two votes.
Mind you, none of this critique comes as a criticism of the work of the two state party chairs who were the principal contenders. Martin touts the fact that Democrats have won every statewide election in Minnesota in the 14 years that he has chaired the party, and anyone who understands the effort that goes into political campaign work can only admire that achievement. Nor is Our Revolution to be criticized for taking the time to discern what they thought would be the best possible option in a not terribly exciting race that was nevertheless of some importance.
At the same time it’s hard not to regret the diminished DNC presence of the “we” that Our Revolution spoke of, after “we” legitimately contended for power in the last contested election. Certainly this lack of interest was in no small part a consequence of the extraordinary circumstances that produced a presidential nominee who had not gone before the voters in a single primary—for the first time since Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
More importantly, it raises a serious question for those of us who believe that the structure and history of the American political system require the left’s engagement in the Democratic Party—uncomfortable and unpleasant as that may be at times. As the social scientists like to say, politics abhors a vacuum, and absent a national Democratic Party presence for the perspective that motivated the Sanders campaigns, people seeking action on the big questions on the big stage may start to look elsewhere. And elsewhere always looms the possibility of the cul-de-sac of yet of another third party candidacy that holds interesting conventions and debates, but ultimately receives only a small share of the vote, but a large share of the blame for the election of a Republican president.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign. But we may have to make it our business to find one.
Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote yes on Pam Bondi's confirmation, but no Democratic senators objected to unanimous consent that allowed the process to move forward.
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to join Republicans late Tuesday in voting to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general, making a corporate lobbyist, election denier, and loyalist of President Donald Trump the nation's top law enforcement official.
But while Fetterman was alone among Democrats in backing Bondi's confirmation, the 54-46 vote took place earlier than initially scheduled as Senate Democrats declined to do everything in their power to hold up the confirmation process.
Some Democratic senators have said publicly that they intend to delay Trump nominees as much as possible in retaliation for billionaire Elon Musk's White House-backed rampage through federal agencies, but no member of the minority party objected to unanimous consent on moving forward with the Bondi proceedings, paving the way for Tuesday's vote.
Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said in a statement that "Pam Bondi's confirmation is just another example of what we've seen from the Trump White House and the Republican-controlled Congress over the last two weeks: a government of, by, and for wealthy special interests."
"I shudder to think what Pam Bondi's response will be when Elon Musk and his band of lost boys wander into the Department of Justice and demand access to computer systems where sensitive information about ongoing criminal investigations is stored," Harvey added. "Bondi's record of caving to big donors and corporate interests is exactly the opposite of what we need right now in an attorney general."
In recent days, as Musk's lieutenants have wreaked havoc across the federal government and moved to shutter entire agencies, Senate Democrats have made a show of opposition, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pumping his fists at a protest Wednesday outside of the Treasury Department building and chanting, "We will win!"
But as The Associated Pressreported, Schumer's chants were "quickly drowned out by chants of, 'Shut down the Senate!'" And even as they've pledged to fight the Trump administration's authoritarianism, Democrats have continued supporting the president's nominees.
"People around the country are asking Senate Dems to fight back," Indivisible's Ezra Levin wrote Tuesday. "But today, 22 Senate Dems voted for yet another Trump nominee (Collins for VA). If yours voted the right way, thank them. If they voted the wrong way, do what you can to let your entire community know and express disapproval."
Our Revolution, a progressive advocacy organization, implored Senate Democrats on Tuesday to "act as a real opposition party" by placing a "blanket hold on all Trump nominees" and "using every procedural tool available" to obstruct business as usual, "from quorum calls to blocking unanimous consent"—a procedure central to the day-to-day functioning of the upper chamber.
"This is not the time for silence or half-measures," said Our Revolution. "Grassroots progressives demand bold, decisive action to protect democracy and halt this authoritarian takeover."
Axiosreported Tuesday that "incensed Democrats are eyeing a wide-scale blockade of nominees that lasts far beyond the confirmation hearings for the boldfaced names in Trump's Cabinet," and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) has vowed to object to unanimous consent on advancing Trump State Department picks over the Musk-led dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But progressives said anything short of all-out opposition to Trump nominees—including sweeping refusal of unanimous consent—is sufficient.
"What's happening right now is unprecedented, dangerous, and ultimately so far beyond anything approaching acceptable that there's only one real option for congressional Democrats. Not a single vote for anything. Nothing," wrote Stephen Miles, the president of Win Without War. "No more [unanimous consent]. No more votes for noms. Nothing. This has to stop."