Media Mulls Dem Civil War: How Can Republicans Pounce?

Gee, weren’t we just getting fed story after story about divisions among Republicans? Didn’t the Protection Racket Media have everyone on the edge of their seats talking about the building backlash among the GOP to Elon Musk and Donald Trump?

Well, stick around. At some point today, the media will get the Frau Farbissina signal with a new Journolist narrative making the current Democrat civil war all about Republicans. Expect words like “seizing,” “pouncing,” and especially “overplaying” to get lots of use.

Until then, though, enjoy the meltdown on the Left. Here’s Punchbowl, which managed to stay ahead of events the last couple of days with some accurate reporting on the oh-so-predictable cave:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to back the House-passed government funding measure effectively puts an end to a shutdown fight that exposed bitter partisan disputes over federal spending.

But the intra-party disputes among Hill Democrats are just getting started. The Democratic base — where most of the money and campaign support comes from — is furious, berating Schumer for helping President Donald Trump and Republicans pass a funding package that most Democrats loathe.

Punchbowl also manages to get to the heart of the civil war, which is Chuck Schumer’s leadership. Or at least that’s the acute problem and catalyst for this moment:

Schumer, who didn’t take a public position until last night, fired a warning shot on Wednesday when he said Republicans didn’t have enough Democratic votes to pass the CR, basically threatening a filibuster. In the meantime, Senate Democrats pushed for a short-term CR intended to buy time for a bipartisan funding deal that was never going anywhere.

This set up the Democratic base for disappointment for seemingly no reason. …

Schumer had been making those same arguments against a shutdown for days in private. Yet he let this drag out, giving Democrats a false sense of hope that the caucus was actually going to fight.

Watching Schumer lead his caucus into this box canyon with no strategy for victory or even an honorable exit was simply astounding. In any other era, Schumer would be forced to resign his caucus leader position, and likely all of his leadership would have to follow. We don’r have that kind of accountability any longer in politics, more’s the pity, but Schumer’s incompetence actually goes back much farther than that.

Schumer could have negotiated a budget last year. House Republicans managed to get most of the budget done on time last year, if not all of it, but Schumer wanted to wait until after the election so that he could have more leverage. After the election, when it was clear that Trump would return to the Oval Office, Schumer could have taken advantage of Joe Biden’s lame-duck period (as well as taken advantage of Biden himself) and cut a deal for the full year that Republicans and Trump could have accepted. Schumer instead insisted on another CR with the apparent expectation that Republicans would fracture on spending and would have to negotiate with Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to finish FY2025’s budget.

Instead, as John Fetterman noted yesterday, Republicans coalesced and Schumer lost his gamble — and then demanded that Republicans work with him anyway. Fetterman heaped scorn on that demand, and for good reasons. 

Axios reports today on House Democrats revolting over Schumer’s retreat. They feel that Schumer left them twisting in the wind and exposed them to voter ire for no good reason: 

House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.

Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.

• “Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.
• A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.

NPR also has a new piece about the revolt among House Dems:

When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his plans to provide one of the key Democratic votes Republicans need to advance a partisan spending bill, the decision hit like a shockwave among House Democrats.

“I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal and this is not just progressive Democrats — this is across the board, the entire party,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday night at a party retreat in Leesburg, Va.

“I think it is a huge slap in the face,” she said.

John wrote about AOC’s reaction last night. David has a post coming up about her next steps, which might exacerbate the civil war brewing among Dems. I’ll let him speak to that rather than pounce on it now.

Anyway, the Democrat meltdown is all over the news today. HuffPo has it, along with an argument that voters would have blamed Republicans for a shutdown. Newsweek’s covering it too, although the New York Times appears to be avoiding it thus far (or perhaps just keeping the Dem meltdown off their front page). The Washington Post only notes that “some Democrats bristle” at Schumer’s decision. 

All of this means only one thing. The Journolist signal will soon go up! Frau Farbissina will undoubtedly have a new directive for narrative journalists soon. The only question will be whether that new narrative will be “Republicans overplay their hand,” “Democrats goad Republicans into pouncing/seizing,” or “Ackshually, Dems always wanted to reduce the size of government.” Or hey, collect the whole Protection Racket Media set!

Consider this a warm-up for the Journolist media “fact-checkers” …