Halfway through 2025, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the embodiment of the kind of leader that his party’s base clearly does not want.
A new Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 62 percent of self-identified Democrats agreed that “the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people.” And key findings from that survey indicate that Schumer is the party’s most out-of-step leader.
The poll showed that a large majority of Democrats want elected officials to reduce “corporate influence,” while a whopping 86 percent “said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority.”
But Schumer’s record is the epitome of corporate influence. For decades, he has given priority to protecting the financial interests of the wealthy and of large corporations.
Schumer vowed not to step aside after he infuriated the vast bulk of congressional Democrats with his vote for President Trump’s spending bill in March. That vote also incensed grassroots Democrats across the country, to the point that he felt compelled to abruptly call off an imminent, long-planned publicity tour for his new book that month.
In effect, Schumer has become persona non grata among his party’s voters in many blue states. More than three months after his “postponed” book tour, it has not been rescheduled — the Senate’s top Democrat is evidently wary of photo ops of protests against him by Democrats around the country. He remains the top Democrat in the Senate at a time when he is deeply unpopular among voters eager for leadership to put up a fight against the Trump administration.
If Senate Democrats are serious about reversing their party’s tailspin and improving its public image, they should insist on ending Schumer’s stint as minority leader. It is time for Democratic colleagues to put their foot down instead of deferring to New York’s senior senator.
Schumer’s behavior stands in sharp contrast to the example set by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). When Democrats lost control of the House in January 2023, causing Pelosi to lose the Speaker’s gavel, she could have taken the post of minority leader but instead chose to step aside.
But when Democrats lost control of the Senate in early January of this year, dislodging Schumer as majority leader, he chose to become minority leader. Now, by clinging to that post, Schumer is damaging the party’s ability to rebound from its setbacks last fall and its current abysmal approval ratings.
Schumer’s unwelcome nickname — “the senator from Wall Street” — is longstanding and well-earned. He reached new heights as corporate America’s champion on Capitol Hill during the 2008 financial crisis, when he “became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout,” as reported by The New York Times. Schumer was playing “an unrivaled role in Washington as beneficiary, advocate and overseer of an industry that is his hometown’s most important business.”
By fall 2009, more than 15 percent of the year’s contributions from Wall Street to all senators had gone to Schumer himself.
Schumer has since remained closely aligned with the very corporate interests that most Democratic voters don’t want party leaders to serve. Meanwhile, sectors such as banking, real estate, finance and the tobacco industry have sent floods of appreciative donations into Schumer’s campaign coffers.
At the end of 2024, Schumer’s campaign committee reported a six-year donor haul of nearly $43 million. More than one-quarter of that total came just from securities and investment companies, real estate interests, law firms and lawyers.
While those patrons and other major backers are presumably happy with Schumer’s capacity to sway legislation, many of his own constituents want him out of Senate leadership. A Marist poll in April found that 53 percent of New Yorkers think he should relinquish his minority leader position.
Here is how the grassroots pro-Democratic group Pass the Torch described him earlier this year: “Chuck Schumer is unwilling and unable to meet the moment. His sole job is to fight MAGA’s fascist takeover of our democracy — instead, he’s directly enabling it. Americans desperately need a real opposition party to stand up to Trump.”
Schumer is the most powerful symbol of how the current Democratic Party has lost touch with its base of voters who will be crucial for making gains in the midterm election next year and recapturing the White House in 2028. Continuing to enshrine him as the biggest spokesperson for Senate Democrats is a way of telling voters that catering to the personal ambition of a timeworn politician is a higher priority than being responsive to the party’s constituents.
Every two years, we hear how the results of federal elections will hinge on turnout. Yet the fact that Schumer remains entrenched as the top Democrat in the Senate indicates that the party is willing to depress its voter turnout rather than shake up its power structure in Congress.
As long as the likes of Schumer are running the Democratic show on Capitol Hill, the party of Trump has little to worry about.
Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His book “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine” was published in 2023.
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