Is he in trouble politically? No. We’re talking about deep blue New York, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s crusade to stop the Trump agenda drove his approval numbers to its lowest ever. Yes, 53 percent still approve his performance, but this is a man who enjoyed 70 percent approval at one point. It was 67 percent in December of 2016. His unfavorables have jumped from 23 percent in December of 2016 to 37 percent today. Again, Schumer is from a solid Democratic state, but it seems that even voters here are tired, or disapproving, of the obstruction. Senate Democrats have blocked two-thirds of Trump’s nominees for administrative positions—all of which were eventually approved but the process has become unnecessarily tedious (via Washington Examiner):
So far, 27 of the 41 nominees needing Senate confirmation have required Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to invoke cloture, the process for ending filibusters. Cloture forces a Senate vote but also obligates the leadership to allow 30 hours of debate on the filibustered matter, effectively throwing sand in the gears of the already slow-moving legislative process. Democrats, who repeatedly denounced Republican obstructionism during the Obama administration, have shown few qualms about using the same tools now.
McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said it has been a struggle to get more than one nomination through in a week. "It has definitely slowed things down, and there has been an unprecedented level of obstruction for a president's first-term nominees. But we can get in more than one. Without cooperation, it's tough to do more than one, but we can and have," he told the Washington Examiner.
The filibusters have been held in the cases of highly controversial nominees such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch but also against lower-profile figures such as Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand and Deputy Secretary of Transportation Jefffrey Rosen.
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Here's a list of all administration nominations voted on by the Senate. The highlighted entries required cloture votes.
June 26: Kristine Svinicki, Nuclear Regulatory Committee, filibustered
June 22: Marshall Billingslea, assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing, Treasury Department, filibustered
June 21: Sigal Mandelker, under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crimes, Treasury Department, filibustered
June 20: Brock Long, FEMA administrator
June 12: Kenneth P. Rapuano, assistant secretary of Defense
June 8: Scott P. Brown, ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa
June 6: Courtney Elwood, CIA general counsel
May 24: John J. Sullivan, deputy secretary of state, filibustered
May 22: Terry Branstad, ambassador to China, filibustered
May 18: Rachel L. Brand, associate attorney general, filibustered
May 16: Jeffrey A. Rosen, deputy secretary of transportation, filibustered
May 11: Robert Lighthizer, U.S. trade representative, filibustered
May 9: Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of Food and Drug Administration, filibustered
May 2: Jay Clayton, Securities and Exchange Commission chief, filibustered
April 27: R. Alexander Acosta, secretary of Labor, filibustered
April 25: Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, filibustered
April 24: Sonny Perdue, secretary of Agriculture
April 7: Neil Gorsuch, Supreme Court justice, filibustered
April 4: Elaine C. Duke, deputy Secretary of Homeland Security
March 23: David Friedman, ambassador to Israel Filibustered
March 21: Charles R. Breyer, U.S. Sentencing Commission
March 21: Danny Reeves, U.S. Sentencing Commission
March 15: Lt. Gen. Herbert R. McMaster Jr., national security adviser
March 15: Dan Coats, director of National Intelligence, filibustered
March 13: Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, filibustered
March 2: Rick Perry, secretary of energy, filibustered
March 2: Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, filibustered
March 1: Ryan Zinke, secretary of the Interior, filibustered
Feb. 27: Wilbur L. Ross, secretary of Commerce, filibustered
Feb. 17: Scott Pruitt, administrator of EPA, filibustered
Feb. 15: Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB, filibustered
Feb. 14: Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration
Feb. 13: David Shulkin, secretary of Veterans Affairs
Feb. 13: Steven Mnuchin, secretary of the Treasury, filibustered
Feb. 10: Tom Price, secretary of Health and Human Services, filibustered
Feb. 7: Jeff Sessions, attorney general, filibustered
Feb. 7: Betsy DeVos, secretary of Education, filibustered
Feb.1: Rex W. Tillerson, secretary of state, filibustered
Jan. 31: Elaine L. Chao, secretary of transportation
Jan. 20: John Kelly, secretary of homeland security
Jan. 20: James N. Mattis, secretary of defense
Yet, there are still nominees waiting in the wings and Cortney wrote about how at this rate, it could take 11 years to confirm all available administrative posts. It’s no wonder why voters feel that Democrats are only anti-Trump and don’t stand for anything else. They’re in the wilderness, and Schumer’s leadership is probably going to keep them there.
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