In the week and a half since Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made his fateful decision, flip-flopping to arrive at his final position on the question of a government shutdown, it has unleashed a slightly pent-up rage and revealed the dilemma the Left is facing in their fight to regain power, and more importantly, to stop Trump.
Schumer, two days before the Friday, March 14 midnight deadline for a government shutdown unless the House-passed Continuing Resolution was agreed to in the Senate, said no, shut it down. This is on the Republicans. But by Thursday, after a reported meeting in which he was yelled at by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to avoid the shutdown, he buckled.
One theory of his thinking is that he believed the Democrats would be blamed for the government shutdown, and it would damage the party that has always argued that a government shutdown was an unacceptable path, and this time it would be on them. Forget that the so-called mainstream media, the usual suspects: CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NYT, AP, Washington Post, would never put the blame on them. They are, and have been for decades, the PR arm of the Democratic Party.
Another working theory is that, while calling it the lesser of two bad choices, Schumer argued that the government shutdown is what Trump really wanted so he could fire a very large number of federal employees who would be deemed non-essential and never be brought back to work.
The third option is that he didn’t want the Democrat Party to appear too beholden to the extremists in their party, so he offered a nod to being bipartisan, knowing the pushback he would get. The party is undergoing all the cliches: an identity crisis and a circular firing squad.
A story Friday in Politico explains it this way:
“Just 40 percent of Democrats approve of the job performance of congressional Democrats, compared to 49 percent who disapprove. That’s a dramatic change from this time last year, when 75 percent of Democrats approved compared to just 21 percent who disapproved…The numbers are clear: No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt.”
The party is very divided on what to do next, with recent Gallup polling finding that 45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same, reported Politico.
New polling shows that former Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris is far and away the early leader for the 2028 presidential race, leading second place Pete Buttigieg by over 25 points, 36% to 10%. Republicans and conservatives are hoping that lasts, believing after watching her last run, that she is as bad a candidate as they could pick in terms of ability, including her ability to think on her feet and take questions from anyone without coughing up her usual word salad.
Even worse than that for Harris, she would either have to defend the policies of Joe Biden or throw him under the bus. She tried, notably unsuccessfully, navigating that precarious balancing act during last year’s presidential run.
The problem is that any attempt by Democrats or their allies in the media to give Trump or his supporters any credit for closing the border, starting to deport the worst of the worst of illegal migrants, cutting obvious waste, fraud, abuse, left-wing ideology and corruption out of the government, and other common-sense policies is a bridge too far. That is the lesson of Schumer’s unwillingness to fight Trump the way the party wants him to.
The Democrats in the House had an easy vote on shutting down the government, since their votes made no difference anyway. Schumer didn’t have that luxury. He had an actual decision to make. And in the face of criticism, even from long-time allies such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schumer pushed back on Sunday’s Meet the Press that he isn’t going anywhere.
Other policies the Left must answer for include their years pretending Joe Biden was mentally fit for the job as president, as the media played along at those staged press conferences, where Biden had the name of the three or four people who were allowed to ask questions, and often had his answers pre-written on an index card. Nothing to see there.
By contrast, Trump takes questions, as do the people he has appointed, from any and every reporter and have shown an unmatched level of transparency. The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, for example, posts all of its findings online. But Musk wasn’t elected to anything, they point out, which is true of everyone in the Executive Branch of government, other than the president and vice president. Musk works at the pleasure of the president.
Other issues in which Americans are seeing first-hand a stark contrast with the previous administration include getting universities and states to agree to control the antisemitic Left, including those here on student visas, keeping men out of women’s sports, while trying to bring an acceptable ending to the Ukraine-Russia war.
Also, he is back to cleaning up Biden’s mess in the Middle East, after Biden attempted to appease Iran by not enforcing sanctions and allowing them to enrich themselves by selling massive amounts of oil to China, leading to Iran’s seven-front proxy war against Israel and international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf region.
The point is the way the Left relentlessly went after Trump, including two baseless impeachments, the RussiaGate hoax and the stolen 2020 election. Since Trump announced his candidacy again—and after Joe Biden privately signaled that he wanted Merrick Garland to aggressively pursue him—they went after him with everything they had.
It was only after Trump announced his plans to run again in 2024, on Nov. 15, 2022, right after the mid-term election, that the full weight of the Left’s lawfare began.
Trump fought it all. The corruption of Judge Juan Merchan, whose daughter’s campaign firm made tens of millions of dollars working for top Democrats; Letitia James’ civil case over Trump supposedly misrepresenting the values of his properties to get better loan and insurance rates; Fani Willis’ RICO case, and Jack Smith’s cases on the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the January 6 “insurrection.” And then two assassination attempts. Were they all connected? All perpetrated by a single cabal? History will sort that out.
After the disastrous leadership of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Trump is left to pick up the wreckage. The previous administration threw open our borders, fueled wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, sold out to Communist China, funneled billions to radical left-wing NGOs and corporations under the guise of resettling migrants and fighting climate change, and meddled in foreign elections through USAID and other government agencies. And now, Democrats are facing their own existential crisis.
I’ve documented the lawfare against Trump, most of which was orchestrated out of the White House. After all that failed to put Trump in prison or convince enough people that he wasn’t worthy of becoming president again, that lawfare has switched to federal district judges trying to micromanage what the White House can do in terms of spending, hiring and firing, deporting violent criminals and others who have come to this country illegally, and withholding money from states that violate federal policy on matters such as allowing men to compete in women’s sports. The rights of the federal district courts to control all of these matters will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
I’ve also documented some of Biden’s actions after the November election meant to cause problems for the incoming Trump administration. More has come to light since then, such as the $20 billion secretly parked at Citibank as a slush fund, $2 billion of which the election denier Stacey Abrams of Georgia was able to secure for her “pop up climate group.” Stay tuned.
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