US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
By Jon Hochschartner
I began President Donald Trump’s second term deeply skeptical of the willingness and ability of Democratic minority leaders in the Senate and House to stand up to the fascist Republican. Since that time, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have shown I wasn’t worried nearly enough. Democrats must replace them with leaders willing to fight.
As Trump rapidly destroys what’s left of American democracy, Schumer and Jeffries are telling the press they’re picking their battles and waiting for the president to make a mistake. While the Republican provokes one constitutional crisis after another, without consequence, the Democratic leaders are sending out generic press releases about inflation.
Trump and his gang of fascist criminals are playing for all the marbles right now. It’s clear from their actions, which are constantly and brazenly in violation of the law, this group doesn’t believe they will ever face any kind of accountability. Their confidence suggests to me Republicans don’t plan on allowing completely free-and-fair elections going forward.
I hope I’m wrong, but recent history has shown the most alarmist view of Trump and his cohort to be the most predictive. Schumer and Jeffries need to be acting with a fierce urgency, like the window of electoral resistance to fascism is closing. The pair’s defenders frequently blame the media for not giving proper weight to Trump’s threat.
This is a justifiable criticism. On the other hand, it’s hard to condemn the press too harshly when leaders of the nominal opposition party are acting, in many ways, as if we are in the midst of politics as usual. Schumer and Jeffries need to be screaming from the rooftops. They should be throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Confronted about their quietism, the Democratic leaders throw up their hands and ask what voters expect of them, given Republican control of all three branches of the federal government. Notably, when former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faced these circumstances in 2009, he didn’t whine and give up.
Instead, McConnell launched a wildly successful strategy of obstruction. Schumer and Jeffries should be doing the same on a far greater scale. They wouldn’t be able to stop all of Trump’s power grabs. But if they showed up, and behaved like they were in the midst of a five-alarm fire, the pair might at least stop some of them.
Schumer and Jeffries need to gum up the works of government in every manner possible. Stalling the fascist agenda is a kind of victory. The more Democrats can run out the clock until the midterms — when they have a chance to regain the Senate and House, and exercise more control over this renegade White House — the better.
The anti-fascist coalition has a wide variety of goals. For instance, I want to see a massive infusion of public funding into cultivated-meat research, which I view as the most promising means of advancing animal welfare. However, none of our aims can be achieved under a right-wing authoritarian state. We must defeat Trump.
The Democratic Party needs leaders who are willing to fight. Schumer and Jeffries have made very clear they are not up to the task. We don’t have time to wait and see if they can turn things around. Too much is at stake. The pair should stand aside or be removed by their colleagues in favor of leadership better suited for this perilous moment.
Jon Hochschartner lives in Connecticut. He is the author of a number of books, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front.
