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Chuck Schumer is facing one of the most perilous moments of his Senate leadership career.
The Senate minority leader came under heavy fire for the second straight day from Democrats enraged at him for backing a Republican bill to avoid a government shutdown, and fallout appears likely to last well past Friday's vote.
A handful of House lawmakers, including some in battleground districts, are floating supporting a primary challenge against him. Activists are organizing efforts to punish him financially.
Schumer is facing questions within his own caucus about whether he made strategic errors in handling the high-stakes moment and failed to outline a clear plan about how to deal with the complex politics of a shutdown, according to interviews with six lawmakers or their aides. Some Democratic senators are even privately questioning whether he should stay on as their leader.
"He's done a great deal of damage to the party," said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal group Indivisible, which has scheduled an emergency call Saturday with its New York chapter and other local leaders to "seriously consider if the current [Democratic] leadership is equipped to handle the moment we're in."
In a remarkable sign of how deep the intraparty frustration with Schumer runs, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to throw his fellow New Yorker a life raft. Asked by reporters on Friday if there should be new leadership in the Senate, he said, "Next question."
Schumer's one-time partner, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), went so far as to urge senators to vote against his position, saying that "this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable." And dozens of House Democrats sent a sharply worded letter to Schumer Friday, which expressed "strong opposition" to his standpoint, arguing that the "American people sent Democrats to Congress to fight against Republican dysfunction and chaos" and that the party should not be "capitulating to their obstruction."
Though several senators said they supported his leadership, some Senate Democrats avoided questions when asked directly Friday about Schumer's leadership role.
"We still have more to play out on this," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) when asked if the backlash would impact Schumer's role as leader. "So I'm not really thinking about the big-picture politics."
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) also dodged, saying: "The leader I don't have confidence in is Donald Trump."
And Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded to a query on whether he still supports Schumer by calling for a "good post-mortem" on Senate Democrats' approach to the government funding fight.
"Anytime you have a failure — and this is a failure altogether — we as a caucus owe it to Democrats across the country and our constituents to look back and see: How do we get ourselves into this situation?" he said.
One Democratic senator granted anonymity to share private discussions said conversations are starting about whether Schumer should be their leader going forward.
"There's a lot of concern about the failure to have a plan and execute on it," the senator said. "It's not like you couldn't figure out that this is what was going to happen."
Democrats fume over Chuck Schumer’s handling of funding fight - POLITICO
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