Watching Chuck Schumer speak to the public is a cringe-inducing experience. He is ponderous, uninspiring, and painfully unfunny. (His attempts at “jokes” include things like “New data came out today from KFF, and that is not Kentucky Fried French Fries.”) He can be downright bizarre, as in the case of the imaginary family he consults for political advice. He is, perhaps worst of all, deeply uninspiring, which should be an automatic disqualification for someone whose job is to provide leadership. 

Now that eight Democrats have capitulated in the stand-off over the government shutdown, Schumer is coming in for some well-deserved criticism. Essentially, Democrats had refused to support reopening the government unless Republicans agreed to continue the subsidies that would keep Obamacare premiums from rising next year. Republicans refused to extend the subsidies, because they don’t believe the government should ensure that people can afford their health insurance. (Free market capitalism, baby!) Since Republicans don’t really mind much of the suffering caused by a government shutdown (they don’t believe in food stamps anyway, so why would they care about people losing them?), the party was not interested in a deal. But as the pain of the shutdown started hitting Americans, Republicans were widely given the blame, because it looked like they were starving the poor and canceling airline flights in order to avoid giving people affordable healthcare. As the problems multiplied, it looked like it would create a major PR nightmare for the Trump Administration, despite their efforts to brand it a “Democrat shutdown.”

But then eight Democrats (including the ever-awful John Fetterman) broke ranks and folded, agreeing to reopen the government and getting almost nothing in return. While Schumer himself was not among the eight, it became clear that he was totally unable to maintain party discipline, and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) prevent a disastrous political blunder. It now looks like the whole shutdown was for nothing, since Democrats didn’t get anything out of maintaining their stance. As Michael Tomasky wrote in the New Republic: 

This was a very weird time to cave, for three reasons. First, the party is coming off a great election night less than a week ago. The leftist won, the centrists won, Democrats won in Georgia and Mississippi; there literally wasn’t a single bad result. Why kill that momentum cold? It’s really politically tone deaf.

Even Ezra Klein—not exactly a fighter by nature—was perplexed by the fact that the party ended the standoff when they were winning the battle for public opinion. Schumer is now at the receiving end of a good deal of anger, because he clearly can’t keep the caucus unified. That anger is not just coming from progressives, with moderate congressman Seth Moulton observing that “if [Schumer] were an effective leader, he would have united his caucus to vote 'No'" on the Senate shutdown deal.” According to CNN’s Harry Enten, Schumer is now the least popular Senate Democratic leader since the 1980s. (Even an article defending Schumer concedes that “he did not really lead here at all,” which should really call into question why he’s the leader of his party.) 

The shutdown fiasco is so embarrassing for Schumer that he is facing new calls for his resignation as leader from elected Democrats. But Schumer has been a symbol of Democratic uselessness for many years. He has long embodied the party’s worst tendencies and was always a perverse choice to serve as leader. As Ryan Cooper wrote in The Week in 2018, “the man is incompetent, has abysmal politics, and… is extremely corrupt.” 

Cooper was not overstating matters. Schumer’s fealty to Wall Street and Big Tech is well-documented. (Jon Schwarz of The Intercept ran through the horrendous record when Schumer was selected as leader.) He has for many years been the ultimate corporate Democrat. He was long one of the most heavily Wall Street-funded senators, personally killed important antitrust measures, and in the leadup to the 2007-2008 financial crisis had taken “steps to protect industry players from government oversight and tougher rules,” including “limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies,... [sponsoring] legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, [pushing] to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and [calling] for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent.” As Julia Rock documents, Schumer and his family have reaped the rewards, with his children picking up lucrative jobs at major tech companies. In fact, “when his daughter Alison worked for Facebook [in 2016], Schumer reportedly intervened on behalf of the company to tell Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) to back off his attacks toward the company amid overlapping scandals.” His staff fully benefit from the infamous DC revolving door, and “more than eighty of his former staffers now work for Big Tech companies, either as lobbyists or employees.” 

Schumer’s political instincts are terrible. He was the one who infamously declared that Democrats would win in 2016 by losing their blue-collar voters while picking up “moderate Republicans.” (“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”) The election of Trump proved that philosophy to be disastrous, and yet somehow Senate Democrats rewarded Schumer by making him their leader in 2017. His idea of effective resistance is to send Trump “very strong letters.”

On one of the most important moral issues of our time, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Schumer has long been a leading enabler of Israeli war crimes. He has publicly said there is no peace in Palestine because Palestinians “don’t believe in the Torah”, made a priority of sending weapons to Israel at the height of the killing in 2023, and smeared the Palestinian solidarity movement, suggesting the charge of genocide against Israel (made by all the major international human rights groups) is antisemitic. He has said that “job is to keep the left pro-Israel.” (If so, it’s another job he has failed at.) Schumer opposed Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and has even attacked Donald Trump from the right on issues of war and peace, implying Trump was soft on terrorism for negotiating with the government of Iran. He also failed to endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, something even Hakeem Jeffries grudgingly managed.

As Cooper wrote in 2018: 

The problem isn't exactly that Schumer is cynical when he should be idealistic. It's that he's just so incredibly feckless. He burns all his political capital on defending despised banks who are no doubt cooking up new schemes to pillage the working class, and a monstrous social media giant that maybe helped Trump win and is hugely biased towards the extreme right in terms of traffic. What does he get in return? Three lost Senate seats. Let's hope in the next Congress, Democrats can come up with someone who isn't so craven and helpless. If nothing else, I suggest start with drawing names out of a hat.

Two years later, Ross Barkan wrote that Schumer “has no policy vision to offer the nation or even his own party” and “has no signature, easily remembered legislative achievement,” noting that he was a “profound liability” for his party. 

We’re now in 2025, and for some reason this man is still leading his party in the Senate. Why? Fortunately, democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not ruled out a primary challenge to Schumer, and some polling has suggested that if she did run, she would utterly crush him. I certainly have my own criticisms of AOC, but she is among the best elected officials in the country, is an electrifying public speaker, and understands that the times call for bold, principled progressivism. She would be infinitely better than Schumer in the Senate.

Unfortunately, that race isn’t until 2028, and we need Schumer out sooner rather than later. It’s an open question who would be better among current senators—Bernie Sanders is the obvious choice, but not technically a Democrat. (Chris Van Hollen has been taking some courageous stances lately.) Perhaps soon we’ll have a few more fighters in office, like Abdul El-Sayed or Graham Platner. But what’s clear is that Schumer has failed utterly. In any functional organization, a leader who had failed as often and badly as Schumer would have been ousted long ago. If the party is to have a future, it needs to rid itself of the burden of this man’s weak leadership.