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The "Schumer Shutdown" is effectively over, just in time for the celebrations attending the 250th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps and Veterans Day. There are some votes still to be taken and messes to clean up at airports and for SNAP recipients. But, the epic failure of this record-setting shutdown of the federal government is carved in political stone for as long as Schumer will be remembered.
Perhaps one or more of the eight Senate Democrats who threw in the proverbial towel Sunday were embarrassed to be honoring the Corps and all veterans even as they refused to do their jobs? We will never know their motives, and believing any Democrat’s public explanation for participation in this fiasco is unwise. (In fairness, three of the eight who joined 52 Republicans to reopen the federal government don’t deserve the scorn being heaped on the 39 Senate Democrats who got rolled.)
The eight (of 47) Senators who saw the carnage being visited on millions by the Schumer Shutdowm and defected are: Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Indepentant Sen. Angus King of Maine
Senators Cortez, Masto, Fetterman and King always voted with the Republicans to re-open the government. The reasons why the other 5 finally joined the coalition of the sane are unclear, but who knows and who cares?
The Congressional Democrats looked and acted like children throughout this record-setting escapade. Most voters may not remember this stunt that hurt so many millions of Americans — some quite badly— but, count on the GOP to try and remind voters frequently that the Democrats shut down the government for a record period of time because they feared the DSA radicals who have taken over their party in many places and are rising in others.
The biggest loser after the people actually hurt or at least inconvenienced by this stunt? The Democratic "leader" in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, by far.
Schumer’s strategy from the start was to head off a primary challenge in 2028 from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ("AOC"). New York holds its Democratic presidential primary on February 1, 2028, so I assume the Senate primary will be that day as well. Someone schooled in New York election law will have to weigh in on whether AOC can run in both, but if she does, Schumer loses the Senate nomination if we go by early polling.
"In a hypothetical matchup for the 2028 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in New York, Ocasio-Cortez leads Schumer by a 19-point margin, 55% to 36%," according to a Data for Progress poll. It would be reasonable for New York law to allow AOC to run in both races, provided she only serves in one office come January 2028, after the general election that fall. Don’t sweat the details, though Schumer certainly will.
The collapse of his costly "Schumer Shutdown" stunt will trail Schumer just as a long chain of heavy lock boxes trailed after Jacob Marley, the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dead partner in "The Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, forever clanking along behind a dead Marley —the sum he had accumulated in his life of greed.
There aren’t any ghosts, but there are political scars that don’t ever fade, and the Schumer Shutdown is one of them. Schumer cooked up this stunt, and he’s going to have to live with it, even as the memory of his predecessor as leader of Senate Democrats, Harry Reid, will always be remembered primarily as the guy who broke the filibuster and allowed President Donald Trump to nominate and Mitch McConnell to confirm three Supreme Court justices with simple majorities after Reid established the precedent of using the nuclear option to change the Senate’s longstanding rules of confirmation.
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Reid traded the filibuster for a majority of Democratic nominees on the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and got the first originalist majority on the Supreme Court in return.
Chuck Schumer didn’t need a record-setting shutdown to juice turnout in last week’s elections, as the two blue states that vote in the odd year after a presidential contest went overwhelming Democratic, as has almost always happened.
Schumer put everyone through this because he thought it might help his chances of spending another six years in elected office, something he has been doing since 1975. You read that right. Schumer has been on the taxpayer’s payroll for almost 51 years already. He’s already got three more guaranteed, but wants another six for a total of at least 60! AOC is a threat to Schumer, and he’s acting irrationally as a result. He hurt his own chances with this circus act that entertained no one. He will pay the price in 2028, if not earlier. How many Senate Democrats already realize they need a new "leader" for the cycle ahead?
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What a terrible choice Schumer made. Now, like former Speaker Pelosi, he will be remembered as a politician who hung around far too long. What has Schumer accomplished? The political equivalent of the Seinfeld Show: a career about nothing, just like the shutdown.
But hey, it’s a living.
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
