Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi Have No Idea What Kind of Fight They’re In
One day. All I wanted was one little day to bask in the election results and delude myself into thinking that, by taking the House, Democrats would provide at least some bulwark against the wave of right-wing fascism that is currently holding this nation hostage. I wanted a day. Instead, we got Chuck Schumer.
Here is a great waste of a man: spineless, craven, utterly terrified of being disliked by the opposition. The past two years have been an ongoing national emergency, with a deranged liar sitting in the Oval Office and a Republican Party newly emboldened by that president’s racism and disregard for facts and law. They’re robbing taxpayers blind. They’re menacing the vulnerable. They’re overseeing sham investigations into corrupt judges and ramming them through. They’re trying to stop ballot counts in Florida as we speak. The White House press secretary literally sent out doctored footage of a reporter to accuse him of assault. There’s no hope of good faith with these assholes. They are EATING America alive, and the proof is on the ground. Mass shootings are happening daily. Kids are locked in jails. We need goddamn Superman to fix this, and instead we're getting these two:
There are gonna be a lot of new faces coming to this Democratic Congressional majority, and the first thing those new faces need to do is get in all the old faces, namely Chuck and Nancy and every horrible consultant they employ. Just because the Democrats reclaimed the House doesn’t mean the emergency has passed. If anything, it’s been amplified, especially now that the president has rid himself of attorney general and Confederate house elf Jeff Sessions. You cannot meet fascism halfway, and yet that’s exactly what Chuck Schumer’s entire political ethos seems to be:
Candidates for a job in Schumer's office should expect two things from the interview process: First, Schumer may ask your SAT scores (no need to ask him; he'll offer that he aced them). Second, he will quiz you about where various senators fall on an ideological spectrum from zero (most conservative) to 100 (most liberal). It's important to know that there is a correct answer for Schumer; it's 75.
That’s from a profile of Schumer in The Washington Post that makes me want to pull the moon out of the sky. It’s insane to me that Democrats would willfully be led by a man who can’t stand the idea of Democrats being all-the-way Democratic. Say what you will about the Republican Party, but at least they have the common courtesy to hold actual viewpoints. They are demented, evil viewpoints, but at least they’re clear: We’d like to fuck you over. They broker no compromise, but at least you know what you’re getting with a Republican.
And, as a bonus, Republicans’ absolutism almost always gives them visibility. It’s not visibility they deserve, but it’s there nonetheless. Trump won the presidency in part because of his ability to dominate press coverage, even if it’s negative. His loony-tune underlings have taken his example and run freely with it. This is a media-ocracy now, and the GOP knows it. Why do I know Iowa congressman Steve King? Because he’s an incredibly public racist, and there’s nothing the media loves more than talking to racists. Meanwhile, here’s squishy-ass Chuck Schumer, dreaming up corny one-liners from a 1992 campaign playbook and shrinking in every conceivable, vital moment.
“Mr. President-elect, I’m just driving past one of your golf courses now,” Schumer recalled telling Trump when he answered the phone. “I didn’t tell him, and maybe I would have now . . . that the course is a failure.”
If Chuck Schumer can’t even rip on Trump’s hideous golf course, what’s he gonna say to the man about his actual, hurtful policies? Democrats need to fight, and they need to be loud about it. What they don’t need is this living can of Aqua Net losing 4D games of chess to himself on a daily basis:
Schumer has no regrets about how Democrats played the moment. He believes Democrats did a good job defining Kavanaugh and his Republican supporters as extremists and as anti-woman. Republicans got their Supreme Court justice, but at what cost politically? “We’ll see how much of a victory Kavanaugh was really for them,” he said.
Republicans have the Supreme Court locked down for years now, Chuck! Victories don't get much bigger than that! And you let Mitch McConnell open the Senatorial border to let dozens of even worse judges stream freely into the system for life! This whole country is having an extended nervous breakdown, but instead of lifting a finger to prevent it, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi relentlessly insist that this is all just a fun episode of House of Cards and that we can still politics our way to compromise. Not only are both these two corrupted by the fundraising circuit, but they essentially suffer from Marketing Brain, in which strategies are held in much higher regard than actual principles:
[Chuck Schumer has] gone so far as to create an imaginary family out of thin air and to constantly seek their counsel. He used to refer to them as “the O’Reillys,” a middle-class family that doesn’t really follow politics that closely but spends a lot of time discussing things at the kitchen table. “I know them,” Schumer said. “I grew up around families like them.” In 2016, “he” voted for Trump and “she” for Clinton, Schumer said, but this election, they are both voting for Democrats. “He was always asking, ‘What would the O’Reillys think?’ ” said Eric Schultz, a former spokesman for Schumer. He doesn’t ask that anymore, but that’s because in 2007, Schumer wrote about the family and decided their name needed to be a little more national. Now he’s always asking, “What would the Baileys think?”
Fuck the Baileys! They don't exist! I hate the Baileys! Throw the Baileys into the sewer! I worked in advertising for a long time. We used to do composite profiles of customers like this. They’re essentially busywork: a valueless exercise advertisers use to justify boring ads no one will watch. It’s completely insane to indulge in this kind of CYA account planning when you are trying to keep America itself from collapsing. We have a white nationalist as president, and Chuck Schumer is still out here chasing BRAND GHOSTS.
Democratic leadership lives in a marketing bubble that is divorced from reality and painfully unequipped to deal with the situation at hand. No wonder people are camping out by Tucker Carlson’s house at night. They don’t feel like Chuck or Nancy is doing ANYTHING to help fight back against the atrocious behavior of the right, and so they feel compelled to take matters into their own hands. Why isn’t it Chuck Schumer getting into Carlson’s face? Why isn't he on the ground in Florida and Georgia right now, raising holy hell about the absolute fucking disgraces going on there? I’ll tell you why: because he’s a coward and he needs to be replaced immediately. He is Ned Flanders standing next to Trump and saying, "Let's not SHOULD this fella to death!"
I understand that Republicans still hold the bulk of power in Washington, and are primed to thwart the new House’s agenda (Pelosi, to her credit, intends on making the restoration of voting rights part of the first package of legislation the new Democrats cook up). But that doesn’t mean you play buddy-buddy with Steve King and hope he decides to not be a Nazi today. It means you PRESSURE him. It means you play offense instead of defense. It means you get in front of a camera and you remind the American people on a daily basis that Republicans are trying to sell them out. You make a fucking racket. You don’t sit down for high tea.
But that’s exactly what Pelosi and Schumer intend to do. They’re already primed to be fooled by think tank losers and conservative fartsniffers like Bret Stephens who say the midterms were a rejection of upstart progressivism in the Democratic party. That’s a fat lie. More home-grown Texans voted for Beto than Ted Cruz. Georgia is a swing state now. An overwhelming number of Republicans support Medicare for all, higher wages, and other progressive ideas that would probably score 100 out of 100 on Chuck’s stupid fucking chart. These ideas ARE the center. They're what the vast majority of people want. But Chuck is still obsessed with what is LABELED the center instead of what the center actually is. The lesson from Tuesday was not “Let’s play nice!” It’s to keep pushing for better ideas and for basic morality. If Chuck and Nancy can’t do that, they should get the hell out, and their new colleagues shouldn’t be shy about saying so.
