Chuck Schumer Should Be Humanely Euthanized*

Nearly a dozen congressional Democrats agree (*politically/metaphorically, of course).

74-year-old Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer just crashed his party’s car so badly that it’s time to take his keys away. And not when he’s up for reelection in three years. Now.

After plunging the country into its longest government shutdown ever, eight Senate members from the Democratic Party caucus folded on Sunday, joining their Republican colleagues in voting to open the federal government.

The defections took place without any meaningful healthcare concessions — the whole point of the shutdown in the first place — and in a clear break with the rest of the Party, most notably helpless Chuck.

This is far from Schumer’s only car crash as leader, but this time many of his insurers in the Democratic Party seem unwilling to cover the damages. Nearly a dozen House Democrats are calling for his ouster. These are not just progressives, but moderates too, like Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Mike Levin of California, and Glenn Ivey of Maryland.

Coming on the heels of Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular win in New York and the instant conversion of just about everyone in public office (even Donald Trump!) to affordability as the “new” agenda, Schumer’s failure here to enforce Party discipline looks that much worse. As a result, Schumer, who has been in politics for nearly half a century, has practically overnight become the face of his party’s gerontocracy problem.

Here’s what the House Democrats are saying:.

• Ro Khanna of California: “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”

• Mike Levin of California: “Chuck Schumer has not met this moment and Senate Democrats would be wise to move on from his leadership.”

• Seth Moulton of Massachusetts: “Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership. If @ChuckSchumer were an effective leader, he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare.”

• Mark Pocan of Wisconsin: “Don’t endorse or say who you voted for in NYC despite there being a Dem candidate. Get Dem Senators to negotiate a terrible “deal” that does nothing real about healthcare. Screw over a national political party. Profile of scourge [sic]? Next.”

• Delia Ramirez of Illinois: “For the sake of our country, Schumer needs to resign.”

• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan: “Sen. Schumer has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people. Schumer should step down.”

• Shri Thanedar of Michigan: “It’s high time we replace Senator Chuck Schumer with a competent and strategic leader.”

• Glenn Ivey of Maryland: “...it may be time for the Senate Democrats to get a new leader.”

• Sylvia Garcia of Texas: “If I were a senator, I would be asking Senator Schumer to step down as minority leader. He simply cannot meet this moment. Senate Democrats need someone who won’t cave to Donald Trump and will actually fight for working families. Democrats deserve better.”

• Veronica Escobar of Texas: When asked by Axios if Schumer should remain Leader, she replied that he “should not.”

The usual Washington smokescreen of process-oriented excuses isn’t working anymore. As Rep. Ro Khanna bluntly told Breaking Points, Schumer is Leader of the Senate Democrats and the buck stops with him.

“Come on, Schumer’s been in politics for 50 years,” Khanna said. “He controls the caucus, he determines when a deal can be cut.”

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have been more circumspect, like Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who when asked if he has confidence in Schumer’s leadership, declined to say yes. Senator Bernie Sanders of all people came to Schumer’s defense when asked by Jake Tapper if he still has confidence in his leadership.

“If Schumer steps down, who is going to take his place?” Sanders replied.

There’s hardly any defense of Schumer’s actual competence, just vague warnings about how there’s simply no one else who wants the job. But sources tell me that Senator Chris Murphy has quietly expressed interest in the position, going back several months now (though he’s loathe to say so publicly).

The most surprising part about the flood of condemnations from congressional Democrats is that it took this long. In February, Schumer became a viral laughingstock and embodiment of his Party’s geriatric leadership when his answer to the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts to the federal government was to chant at a protest in DC, “We will win! We will win! We will win! We won’t rest! We won’t rest! We won’t rest!”

More than just a cringey meme, the incident was symptomatic of a much deeper problem: Schumer’s inability to engage the public in any compelling way. This comes across in virtually all of his public appearances.

A perverse hobby of mine for the past year has been monitoring Schumer’s media hits on cable news, thinking it show people how alarmingly out-of-touch he was. But Schumer’s performances were much worse than that, reminiscent of President Biden’s decline. He frequently pauses and forgets words — that is, when he even does media hits. Sometimes he just disappears entirely, as was the case earlier this year when he was briefly hospitalized (his staff says for dehydration). This summer, he went two months without a single TV interview.

When the shutdown began, Schumer vowed on Morning Joe that he and his party would “be fighting everywhere,” including “in the social media.” The! (His vow echoed another similar remark when, after Trump won, a grinning Schumer assured Democratic influencer Aaron Parnas that he’d be “dealing with the social media.”)

Schumer talking to Aaron Parnas

In another shutdown appearance on Morning Joe, Schumer, trying to reply that the host had posed a good question, instead flubbed, “That’s a good Chuck.” Amid laughter from one of the hosts, he corrected himself: “I’m the Chuck.”

It felt like watching Biden stumble through one of his speeches.

Then there’s his bizarre jokes, like during an otherwise solemn press conference about the need for a shutdown deal to address the soaring cost of health insurance. Schumer likened one of the sources he was citing, the Kaiser Family Foundation, to, well, fried chicken.

“New data came out today from KFF — and that is not Kentucky Fried French Fries,” Schumer said, breaking down laughing.

In March, he folded in the face of another funding resolution favored by President Trump. This pissed off Democratic voters worse than anything I could remember. The only discernible change in Schumer behavior’s since then is the replacement of his grandpa-style, half moon reading glasses with a hipper plastic-frame pair, right before the current shutdown. Presumably part of an image update in anticipation of a media blitz, Schumer at first sat down for a few more TV interviews than usual but then just … stopped.

The emperor’s new frames

With prominent Democrat-aligned advocacy groups like MoveOn, Indivisible, Our Revolution, Leaders We Deserve, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee calling for Schumer to step down from leadership, it seems a question of when, not if.

The gerontocracy is dead, as I wrote last week The question is if they’ll be allowed to continue shambling along as zombies until the next election, driving the party vehicle into the next catastrophic wreck, or if someone will grab the wheel. The voters seem to have made it clear that they are ready for the next generation. They urgently want action on pocketbook issues.

Then there’s the predictable Washington solution brewing, one that abandons progress and vision altogether, which I touched on yesterday. It’s the idea that national security experience should be the basis for the next generation of leaders, that this kind of service evinces responsibility and grownup-ness. Virginia’s Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, who served in the CIA, and New Jersey’s Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill, represent this camp. They are both fairly young and frequently cited by Democratic leadership as the future of the Party.

And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, whose unsanctioned and even repudiated campaign succeeded at engaging exactly the young voters that the same Democratic leaders had resolved to reach after their bruising loss to Trump and Republicans in 2024. Others might have been mouthing affordability as some vague objective, but Mamdani showed that normal people need and want to be heard; that they want politicians who aren’t afraid to think big — with specific promises like “RENT FREEZE” — and are going to fight tooth-and-nail for their vision. Now affordability is so lodged in the national political consciousness that even Trump is imitating Mamdani. With polling showing affordability concerns at the top of voters’ concerns by a mile, the affordability mandate is clearly the path to political power.

No one wants to put a beloved pet down; Schumer’s leadership, however, is not engendering much love these days. He registers the lowest approval rating of any Democratic Senate Leader in recorded history. It’s time for his political career to cross the rainbow bridge.

— Edited by William M. Arkin