Why Does Schumer Keep Trying to Cave? [View all]

How the Senate Democratic leader and his Gang of Eight keep trying to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

https://prospect.org/2025/11/08/why-does-schumer-keep-trying-to-cave-government-shutdown/


Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters about Democratic victories on Election Day, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, day 36 of the government shutdown. Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Most commentators, including me, concluded that the Tuesday election victory saved Democrats from capitulating to Republican demands to pass a simple continuing resolution to re-open the government, in exchange for vague assurances of a vote on Affordable Care Act subsidies that amount to nothing. But my reporting finds that at the Thursday meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus, two days after the election, Democrats very nearly capitulated once again.

Here’s what occurred. It has been widely assumed that the group of eight mostly centrist Senate Democrats, who have been looking to broker a hollow deal on Republican terms, were free-lancing. In fact, they were acting with the express approval of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and were reporting to him daily. At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to re-open the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal. The leaders of the proposed Democratic cave-in, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, then backed down.

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The mystery is why Schumer keeps flirting with capitulation in exchange for nothing. Democrats have the political momentum, Republicans are divided, and a majority of voters blame Republicans for the shutdown. Schumer himself faces a likely primary challenge for his own Senate seat. He is even more vulnerable if he presides over a Democratic capitulation.

Equally bizarre is Shaheen’s game, since she is not even running for re-election when her term expires in 2026. She is on the Appropriations Committee, and part of the weak Republican offer is to pass the appropriations bills that have gone through the committee on a bipartisan basis. Clearly, Shaheen is more concerned with getting those bills done than using important leverage to protect the signature Democratic legislative achievement of this century. Even when Schumer and centrist Democrats have been dealt a strong hand, these are the sort of players who would fold a royal flush.

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