Chuck Schumer Needs a Spine Transplant . . .

Senate Minority Leader showed up in his invertebrate form for the battle over the GOP-led continuing resolution to fund the government through most of the remaining year. He has often railed about the possible collapse of democracy under Trump’s presidency, loudly trashing the GOP for their draconian plans to anyone who has a microphone. Nonetheless, actual tactical follow-up to his righteous indignation has rarely followed. He slithers away from a real fight and by now represents the ghost of a Democratic party long hobbled by bipartisanship and, frankly, fear of incivility, a decades old Democratic disability. His latest was his codging together enough Democratic senators’ votes to pass the GOP continuing resolution granting Trump with a carte blanche for chaos for the rest of the fiscal year. It’s what happens when you bring a Schumer to a knife fight.

MSNBC’s The Weekend‘s Symone Sanders-Townsend laid it on in her inimitable style:

“In 2024, Democrats ran on warnings that Trump was going to destroy democracy, and now that he and his team are very much in the process of doing just that, these same politicians are questioning whether or not to stand up to him and his party at one of the first opportunities they have to meaningfully do so. The only opportunity, I would add, there’s not another option for Senate or Democratic or Senate Democrats or House Democrats to effectively push back. This was it! They blew it! The Democratic Tea Party was born the same day that Chuck Schumer took to that podium to read that very well-crafted statement that told us he folded like a paper napkin.”

Does the Senate Democratic caucus have enough senators with spines to (finally) do what is needed and dethrone their minority leader? It’s long past time to do so. Pick a fighter, for example, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren, or Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse. Put a tiger in your tank, and ditch the civility.