Liberals’ Rage Over Schumer Signals Challenge of Moving Democrats to the Center

Senator Schumer is running scared from his own party.He can’t even hit the road to promote his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning,” for fear of protests. The Senate minority leader had to postpone his publicity tour on account of what a spokeswoman calls “security concerns.” Progressive Democrats, furious that Mr. Schumer passed a Republican spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, are getting up close to show him how angry they are.They’re demonstrating outside his home at Brooklyn, and wherever he might have gone to hawk his book, protesters were ready to follow. So, to dodge embarrassment or worse, Mr. Schumer beat a retreat. Such is life at the top of the Democratic Party these days.Because Mr. Schumer couldn’t outmaneuver President Trump in the budget showdown, his own team considers him not just a loser but a traitor.House Democrats have even begun encouraging Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to launch a primary challenge against him.The 74-year-old senator isn’t up for re-election until 2028, which is too long for Democrats to wait, according to the Nation — the progressive magazine’s Jeet Heer is calling for Mr. Schumer to resign immediately, both from leadership and the Senate. No wonder CNN’s latest poll shows Democrats with a record-low favorability rating of 29 percent: The party is at war with itself, and Democratic voters themselves increasingly dislike what they see from their elected officials and leaders like Mr. Schumer. Yet the CNN survey shows only 16 percent of Democrats think their party is too extreme.Mr. Schumer knows better — that’s why he’s lying low instead of out selling his book.The issue he wrote his book about shows just how adrift the Democrats are. Mr. Schumer is publishing a warning about antisemitism at the same time he’s embroiled in the party’s infighting over Israel, Palestine, and campus protests that have targeted Jews.He’s taken a weaker stand against campus antisemitism than the Trump administration has, and he opposes deporting Mahmoud Khalil, who is a Syrian immigrant studying at Columbia University, for his anti-Israel activism.Yet Mr. Schumer outraged progressive opinion again on Sunday, when answers he gave in an interview with the New York Times led critics on the left to accuse him of essentially agreeing with Mr. Trump’s decision to withhold $400 million in federal funding from Columbia because of its lackluster record in combating antisemitism. Late last year, however, a report by the House Education and Workforce Committee — under Republican control, it should be noted — claimed Mr. Schumer had told Columbia’s then-president, Minouche Shafik, not to worry about a reckoning over antisemitism if Democrats took control of the Senate. The university’s “political problems are really only among Republicans,” Mr. Schumer was alleged to have said — though a Mr. Schumer spokesman denied those were his words and called the report “hearsay.”Mr. Schumer is a shifty politician with an acute problem in this moment: The more he tries to appear moderate, the more progressives in his party identify him not with centrism but with Mr. Trump.Stopping a government shutdown? That’s Trumpism.Telling the New York Times when a campus protest “shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn’t do enough”?That’s Trumpism.In the eyes of his party’s activists, Mr. Schumer isn’t a moderate — he’s a coward, handing Mr. Trump victory after victory, when what Democrats need most is the will to resist the president.Yet to anyone who’s not a Democrat, Mr. Schumer’s pretense of moderation is belied by the simple fact he’s a leader of a party that’s nowhere near the center.And Mr. Schumer isn’t alone in his agony.Other prominent Democrats, such as Governor Newsom, are finding it just as hard to distance themselves from the left without winding up too close to Mr. Trump for the comfort of the Democratic base.Mr. Newsom’s sin has been to have MAGA masterminds like Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on his podcast.The California governor, still dreaming of higher office, has also “evolved” on the question of allowing transgender participation in women’s sports — that is, he’s come around to a view closer to Mr. Trump’s, because that’s where he senses the common-sense center is today.The Democratic base wants the party to be defined by vehement opposition to the president — while clever and unprincipled Democratic leaders know the smart play is to become more like him.Last year, Mr. Trump defeated the Democrats; this year, he gets to watch them defeat themselves, as protesters who might once have picketed him now turn their ire on Mr. Schumer. Creators.com

Liberals’ Rage Over Schumer Signals Challenge of Moving Democrats to the Center

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