Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) seemed to have taken the 2024 loss somewhat well. The Democrats expected a total blue takeover of Washington, with Kamala Harris at the helm. Instead, it was a MAGA landslide. Republicans kept the House, reclaimed the Senate, and took back the White House—a Democrat’s true nightmare.
The soon-to-be former Senate majority leader was mushy about bipartisanship and hoped that Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the newly minted leader of Senate Republicans, would be willing to work across the aisle. The problem is that Schumer didn’t plan to be so accommodating if things had gone differently on election night.
For starters, the man was planning to nuke the legislative filibuster if Democrats retained control, which should be on the minds of every Republican senator regarding any future talks on legislation. Byron York has more, with the funny lede: “Schumer to Republicans: Please don’t do to us what we were going to do to you.’ Not that this is a shock—they tried to do this before (via Washington Examiner):
Schumer’s top priority in the new Harris administration would have been to eliminate the legislative filibuster that has long protected minority rights in the Senate. That way, even if the Senate were tied between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, those 50 Democrats, with the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Tim Walz, could enact far-reaching legislation without any input at all from Republicans. Washington would have true one-party rule, and the minority party would have no say in things whatsoever.
Democrats had tried to kill the filibuster in 2022, when Democrats had just 50 votes, but fell two votes short when two independent-minded Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, refused to go along with the party. In 2022, Democrats picked up another seat, giving them a 51-49 majority in the Senate. That put them one vote closer to killing the filibuster.
Schumer believed 2024 would be the year Democrats could finally erase any Republican power in the Senate. Manchin and Sinema were both leaving the Senate, Schumer explained at his talk in Chicago. Manchin’s seat would be won by a Republican, so it still would be unavailable for Democrats. But Sinema’s seat would be won by Democrat Ruben Gallego, Schumer said, and Gallego would go along with the party on the filibuster. That would give Democrats the 50 votes they needed, provided there was a Vice President Walz to break the tie.
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So this week, Schumer went to the well of the Senate and addressed some remarks to his Republican colleagues. “Another closely contested election now comes to an end,” he said. “To my Republican colleagues, I offer a word of caution in good faith: Take care not to misread the will of the people, and do not abandon the need for bipartisanship. After winning an election, the temptation may be to go to the extreme. We’ve seen that happen over the decades, and it has consistently backfired on the party in power. So, instead of going to the extremes, I remind my colleagues that this body is most effective when it’s bipartisan. If we want the next four years in the Senate to be as productive as the last four, the only way that will happen is through bipartisan cooperation.”
Ok, Chuck—we know what you wanted to do. Dare I say, maybe we should do it since we’re in a state of emergency regarding the immigration crisis and the economy.
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