A growing number of Congressional Democrats have been calling for Chuck Schumer to step down as Senate Minority Leader. Discontent with Schumer has been brewing for a long time. Things came to a head, though, after the end of the government shutdown.

The original impasse was about whether to continue subsidies for buying health insurance at the current levels. Democrats refused to vote for a Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded, pointing out that the effect would be to allow many Americans’ insurance premiums to double or even triple. Now, after the longest shutdown in American history, exactly nothing has changed. Eight Senate Democrats took a deal that merely promised a future, separate vote on the healthcare subsidies. But such a vote had been on the table all along. Why, then, did Democrats give up all their leverage for a separate vote they’re guaranteed to lose?

Schumer’s defenders argue that it’s unfair to blame him for the ignominious collapse of the Democrats’ efforts. After all, he voted “No”. And at least one report claims that this reflected his private position in discussions with his colleagues. So why blame him for the actions of eight other Senate Democrats?

One massive problem with this narrative is that one of the eight defectors, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, is Schumer’s closest lieutenant in the Senate. He’s the Democrats’ Whip and is tasked with maintaining party discipline. Durbin and the other defectors say they consulted with Schumer every day. While there were two Senate Democrats — Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto — who were always unhappy with Democrats’ shutdown strategy, another six eventually changed their minds. The six new “Yes” votes were all safe scapegoats, free to take the political hit, since they won’t have to face voters in 2026. As Congressman Ro Khanna has forcefully argued, it stretches credulity to believe that these six truly acted independently of Schumer.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this is wrong, though, and he really didn’t approve of what his colleagues were doing. This wouldn’t do much to undercut the case that Schumer needs to go. While denying coordination, Durbin and a fellow defector, New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, both told the Washington Post that they informed Schumer of their decision in advance and that he “never tried to dissuade” them.

Let that sink in. The leader of the opposition party, at the end of his most significant confrontation with the Trump administration all year, didn’t even try to dissuade his second-in-command from taking the deal. Well, at least Durbin said that “he was a gentleman about it.”

The Democrats’ capitulation is particularly maddening since Durbin and his colleagues were snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Polls consistently showed that the public blamed the GOP for the impasse. And the Democratic base certainly wants a fight. Populist currents are blowing through the Democratic electorate. The collapse of the shutdown came just a week after Zohran Mamdani’s momentous win in the New York City mayoral race.

Where was Schumer, a Brooklyn resident, then? He supported Andrew Cuomo in the primary, then pointedly refused to back his party’s nominee. In the end, he wouldn’t even tell the press who he’d voted for, meaning that he almost certainly cast a vote for Cuomo.

That’s Schumer in a nutshell. When it comes to a confrontation with the most aggressively Right-wing administration in recent history over letting insurance premiums skyrocket for ordinary Americans, he’s a “gentleman”. When he’s up against the Left-populist flank of his own party, though, he’s steady as a rock.

Clearly, voters in his hometown couldn’t care less what he thinks. And the best defence anyone can offer for his role in this week’s fiasco is that Senate Democrats care just as little, and so there was nothing he could do to dissuade the eight defectors even if he had tried. If that’s true, that makes him just about the least imposing possible leader of the opposition to Trump.

Either way, it’s long past time for him to go.

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Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist and the host of the Give Them an Argument podcast.

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