Chuck Schumer’s Quiet Betrayal: The Day the Democratic Party Forgot Who It Serves

The American people begged their leaders to stand up to Trumpism. Instead, their Senate “leader” sold them out. When courage becomes optional, democracy becomes impossible...

What we witnessed this weekend in the United States Senate wasn’t “compromise.” It was surrender: the kind of gutless, morally bankrupt capitulation that betrays American families and feeds the billionaires devouring our democracy.

Eight Senators who caucus with the Democrats joined Republicans to end the government shutdown, not in victory, not to secure healthcare for millions, but to hand Donald Trump and his morbidly rich cronies a gift-wrapped political win.

And standing at the center of this disgrace is Chuck Schumer, the so-called “leader” of the Senate Democrats, who orchestrated — or at least approved or failed to stop — the entire debacle from behind the curtain, then had the gall to vote “no” at the last minute to wash his hands of it.

Let’s be clear: this was Schumer’s deal. He built it, he pushed it, and he enabled it. His fingerprints are all over this betrayal.

And what did Democrats get in exchange for reopening the government? What did the American people get? Nothing.

Not a penny restored to Medicaid (or the hit Medicare will take in a year under Trump’s Big Ugly Bill). Not a rollback of Trump’s rescissions that gutted essential agencies. Not even a meaningful vote to protect Affordable Care Act subsidies or food stamps.

The so-called “promise” of a vote in the Senate within 40 days is a joke, a political placebo meant to sedate the public while the insurance industry counts its profits.

Sen. Bernie Sanders was right to call Sunday evening’s vote a “very bad night.” The deal explodes healthcare premiums for over 20 million Americans and paves the way for 15 million to lose coverage altogether.

That lack of coverage, experts estimate, will cause 50,000 preventable deaths a year. These are real people and their children, their deaths sacrificed at the altar of Trump’s and the GOP’s lust for wealth and power.

And it wasn’t just cowardice: it was also cash.

The healthcare industry owns far too many Democrats, and this vote appears to prove it. The same corporations that profit from denying you care are stuffing the pockets of the very lawmakers who just “compromised” your future.

When Democrats vote with Republicans to gut healthcare, it’s not bipartisanship. It’s corruption, legalized and laundered through Citizens United campaign finance loopholes created by five bought-and-paid-for Republicans on the Supreme Court. Bribery by another name.

Chuck Schumer has presided over this kind of rot for years, protecting incumbents who serve donors instead of voters, blowing up efforts to promote genuine progressives like Bernie in 2016, while building a machine that runs on Wall Street money and insurance and banking industry cash. He was so ineffective he couldn’t even stop Manchin and Sinema back in the day, even though he wields enormous power.

Schumer’s’ leadership — and, generally, the leadership of the DNC since the 1990s Clinton years — have turned the Democratic Party from the party of FDR into a cautious club managed by well-paid consultants who tremble at their own shadows while they fill their bank accounts with blood money.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump is showing us exactly what real political power looks like, as well as what it fears.

The simple reality is that Trump was about to break. He was freaking out.

Before the eight Democratic-caucusing Senators caved to the GOP, Trump was so frantic that he was demanding Senate Republicans end the filibuster altogether, so he could “ram through legislation that will make sure no Democrat ever gets elected again.”

GOP leaders — including (and especially) Senate Majority Leader John Thune — are terrified at the possibility of ending the filibuster, not out of principle, but out of self-preservation. They know ending it could expose just how extreme and deranged the Republican agenda really is.

As I’ve argued before, the filibuster has been a scam for a half-century, a tool that since the Reagan era both Republicans and corporate Democrats alike use every year to fool their base and donors into thinking their hands are tied.

It obscures Republican radicalism, while similarly protecting the so-called “moderate” Democrats who spit-shine the boots of their corporate masters.

Trump believes killing the filibuster will increase his power. In reality, it would tear his party apart and lay bare its madness for the world to see because Republicans could no longer say, “We couldn’t pass that bill to [fill in the blank] because those damn Democrats filibustered it.”

But the filibuster should be ended, and if these eight Democrats hadn’t surrendered, Trump might have forced it. That would’ve been the best thing for America.

And make no mistake: Trump’s terrified or he wouldn’t have even considered killing the filibuster. As Steve Bannon bluntly said, if Democrats ever regain full control, “a lot of Republicans are going to prison.” Presumably including Trump himself.

Compounding Trump’s freak-out, alleged horrors are leaking out about how Trump appears in the Epstein files. Reporter David Schuster noted:

“A few GOP House members say they’ve heard from FBI/DOJ contacts that the Epstein files (with copies in different agencies) are worse than Michael Wolff’s description of Epstein photos showing Trump with half naked teenage girls.”

Trump knows what’s in those files; he partied with Epstein for a decade and is now throwing bennies at Ghislaine Maxwell to try to keep her quiet. That’s why he’s trying to distract his supporters by hosting his Great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago, making incoherent threats about cash check “rebates” to Americans and war in Venezuela, and hustling billions from foreign dictators to insulate himself and his boys before the walls close in.

If Democrats are going to really confront Trump’s authoritarianism and the corporate corruption that fuels it — which is absolutely necessary now to rescue and sustain American democracy — we need a Senate leader with a spine, not a strategist for surrender. Chuck Schumer’s brand of 90s politics, to triangulate, capitulate, and hope nobody notices, has failed us for decades.

He embodies the rot of the old guard: a generation of post-1992 Democrats who think fundraising prowess equals political courage.

It doesn’t. Times have changed, and we’re now standing in the midst of a progressive populist era. Just look at New York’s mayoral race.

Leadership means fighting for working families, not finessing deals for donors. It means standing up to Trumpism, not whispering in back rooms while pretending to resist.

We need new leadership. America — and Democrats — deserve statesmen and women willing to call out corruption in their own ranks, to reject the blood money of lobbyists, and to stand unflinchingly for universal healthcare, living wages, and democracy itself.

Americans are sick of being sold out. We’re done watching our supposed champions cave while billionaires pop champagne. The fight for our democracy won’t be won by appeasing bullies or bowing to donors.

It’ll be won when Democrats rediscover their courage, and when Chuck Schumer finally steps aside to be replaced by a true fighter.

Louise’s Daily Song: “The Quiet Betrayal”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink is now available in bookstores nationwide.
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