On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “Washington Week,” Punchbowl News Senior Congressional Reporter Andrew Desiderio said that Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “was not going to be part of the solution” on the government shutdown because “For his sort of political benefit, Chuck Schumer had to be seen as basically fighting this fight the entire way because of how poorly he managed this back in March.”
Desiderio said, “I thought it was very interesting that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who kind of led the eight of them to vote for this and was negotiating with Republicans, she would not pointedly answer the question of, did Sen. Schumer at least support you sitting down with these Republicans to try to cut a deal, right? Typically, in the past, when we have these crises on Capitol Hill, you would see a gang form, right? Whether formal or informal, it would be a leader-to-leader conversation. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune (R-SD) realized early on that Chuck Schumer was not going to be part of the solution to this, right? For his sort of political benefit, Chuck Schumer had to be seen as basically fighting this fight the entire way because of how poorly he managed this back in March.”
He continued, “Now he has bettered his standing a little bit with his caucus. He’s not going to be forced out, right? There’s this — a lot of chatter online about that, that’s not going to happen, right? The question is, will he be able to be re-elected as the Democratic leader for the next Congress? Those elections will happen after the 2026 midterms.”
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