The ballots were barely counted when the left decided what Democrats needed after their best night in years: a new boss.
On Wednesday, the progressive group Indivisible called on Senate Democrats to replace Chuck Schumer. That was less than a day after his party took both chambers of Congress.
“Yesterday, voters made it very clear that they want a new generation of Democratic fighters,” the group posted. “It’s time for Senate Democrats to choose new leadership.”
Most leaders get a honeymoon. Schumer got an eviction notice.
He spent Wednesday morning savoring the win, calling it “a generational remake of the Senate map that has huge consequences for history.” He may be right. He just may not like whose history it turns out to be.
The pressure isn’t only coming from outside the building. Some of it is about to be sworn in.
Newly elected Democrats from Michigan, Kansas, Illinois and Maine have said they won’t back him for majority leader. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed hasn’t been coy. He told Current Affairs in May that Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen was his “number one pick,” then introduced Van Hollen at a July rally as the “next Senate majority leader.” Not subtle. Not meant to be.
Others are hedging, which in Washington is its own kind of answer. Texas winner James Talarico told Punchbowl News in September that his party needs “new blood.” New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas wouldn’t commit either, talking instead about “new voices in leadership.”
New blood. New voices. New generation. They keep circling the same word without saying it: new.
The numbers behind the grumbling aren’t kind. An NBC News poll at the end of October found just 13 percent of registered voters viewed Schumer’s leadership positively. Thirteen percent isn’t a base. It’s a book club.
Indivisible put it bluntly. Americans, the group said, “did not elect Democrats by historic margins just to bend the knee and go back to business as usual.”
And yet. Schumer says he has the votes, and the math may be on his side. He needs only a simple majority of a caucus that’s expected to number in the mid-50s. Asked about the criticism, he waved it off: “This is not about me.”
It never is, until it is.
A party that wins big tends to believe it won on its own terms. The activist left thinks Tuesday was a mandate to clean house. Schumer thinks it was a vindication. They can’t both be right, and next month’s leadership vote will show which one the new Senate really belongs to.
