Chuck Schumer is Getting ‘More and More Furious’ (and That’s Good News for Republicans)

Stand back, everyone. Chuck Schumer is getting really furious and there’s no telling what he might do. He could turn green and Hulk out any moment now. One guess what he’s so angry about.

I asked Senator Chuck Schumer what Americans want from Democrats right now.

“They want us to beat Trump and stop this shit,” he told me. “And that’s what we’re doing.”…

“I’m getting more and more furious,” Mr. Schumer told me. “At first the voters were just down in the dumps, but I think they were like me when they saw how bad this was. They said we can’t just — you know, my father taught me a lesson. He said, ‘When you’re doing something important, look in your heart.’ He would say, ‘Make sure it’s the right thing to do. And then persist, persist, persist and don’t give up, and you will succeed.’”

The image of 74-year-old Chuck Schumer getting furious is just funny to me. I think it’s because I’ve seen him try to act furious and it just comes off as sort of screechy and not very impressive. Remember this moment from just over a week ago?

The future of the Democratic party! Schumer leads a chant of “We will win! We will win! We won’t rest! We won’t rest!” pic.twitter.com/srVDVMHtaO

— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) February 4, 2025

It was so bad that even Jimmy Kimmel, after playing the clip on his show, concluded, “Oh, we are so f[bleep]ed. I mean, we are doomed.”

NY Times columnist Mara Gay, who wrote the piece I’m quoting, says part of the problem is that Democrats still haven’t really figured out why they lost the last election so badly. That makes it hard to know how to proceed.

The leadership of America’s opposition party cannot seem to decide if it will work with Republicans where there are areas of agreement, throw up its hands or fight. Part of the problem is a lack of consensus in the party about why the Democrats lost elections in November and what should be done about it.

This is a vital debate. But America doesn’t have time to wait for Democrats to find the perfect message.

What Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries can do is convey the enormous danger of this moment, immediately and continually, and speak up about how the gutting of a particular government program and the trampling of constitutional power will affect people’s lives. They can defend with a ferocious resolve the values that millions of Americans still fiercely believe in: civil rights and the rule of law, science and respect for the earth, freedom of religion, the dignity of all human beings.

Forgive me but isn’t that all the same stuff Democrats ran on a few months ago? Trump was a danger to democracy, a threat to science, the environment, abortion, etc. All Gay has really done here is downplay abortion and sidestep immigration and trans issues with a reference to “the dignity of all human beings.” Her solution, in other words, is to keep running the same playbook but louder. And the point of her piece is that Chuck Schumer is starting to agree with her.

Frankly, this is terribly dumb idea and I hope Democrats go all in on it.

Knowing why Democrats lost the last election matters. There is always a debate between the two wings of the Democratic party after a loss. Progressives argue the party was too bland and didn’t stand for anything. Moderates argue people were turned off by the leftist stances the party had already taken. Who was right in 2024?

The best evidence supports the idea that the moderates were right. Kamala Harris didn’t lose because progressives stayed home. She lost because swing voters switched sides in Trump’s favor.

In the New York Times/Siena College’s final polls of the battleground states, 6 percent of Trump supporters said they’d backed Biden in 2020, while 4 percent of Harris voters said they had backed Trump…

In truth, Americans who want the Democratic Party to be more uniformly progressive are, by and large, the most reliably Democratic voters in the country. It is Democrats with more heterodox views — those who are progressive on some issues and moderate or conservative on others — that the party is most at risk of losing to either Republicans or the living room couch.

Democrats lost because of high inflation, because of unchecked immigration, because of social extremism on the trans issue and because the party had two weak candidates (one of whom they’d been lying about for years). So if the plan is to keep shouting in defense of all these same positions (including opposing cuts to the size of government which would stem inflation), they are going to sink deeper into a hole. 

What they should do is pay attention to polls which show that many Democrats are looking for a little moderation, not more shouting.

In the wake of the 2024 election and Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term as president, a plurality of Democrats would like their party to become more moderate…

Support for a more moderate Democratic Party among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents has grown by 11 percentage points, to 45%, since 2021. At the same time, Democrats’ and leaners’ desire for a more liberal party has declined five points, to 29%, and preferences for no change in party ideology have fallen nine points, to 22%.

The really important takeaway is that the party remains heavily divided with the far left looking to move further left and the moderates looking to dial it back.

In the January poll, 49% of Democrats and Democratic leaners self-identify as politically liberal, 43% as moderate and just 6% as conservative. Liberal Democrats would prefer that their party become more liberal (45%) or stay the same as it is now (22%) rather than be more moderate (30%). Conversely, moderate Democrats broadly back a more moderate shift for the party (62%), while 22% think it should remain the same, and 14% favor a more liberal party.

The same progressives who just handed their party a stunning loss are hoping anger over Trump will allow them to seize the wheel once again. Forget moderation, let’s drive angry! As a strategy to put themselves up front in the driver’s seat, it might work. As a strategy to win in 2026, I think it could backfire spectacularly.

What happens if the far left wins this fight for control? I think it’s possible we see a further erosion of their base of voters. Democrats can’t win by appealing solely to college grads and woke white women. Moving more to the left could mean they lose even more Hispanic and Black voters next time out.

Early on, Chuck Schumer seemed to recognize that moderation was the path back to power. Now he seems to be changing his tune. I think this is good news for Republicans, both because Schumer is truly awful at leading an angry mob and because this recommits the party to the same playbook that lost them the last election. What is that definition of insanity again?