Tag: Chuck Schumer

Is the Fix Already In?

How Despicable Are Democratic Leaders?

BILL ASTORE

NOV 07, 2026

This week’s elections were obviously a cry for change by the American people. Angry at Trump for failing to keep his promises to put America first, voters dealt MAGA and the Republicans a severe rebuke. The only real choice Americans had to express that rebuke was to vote blue, and they did.

And then I saw this tweet this AM:

Yes, Democrats are choosing leaders with LOWER favorability than Trump:

🔴 DONALD TRUMP = 38.5

🔵 HAKEEM JEFFRIES = 28.0

🔵 CHUCK SCHUMER = 24.7

*****

It’s not yet a done deal that Jeffries will be Speaker and Schumer will be Senate Majority Leader, but either or both will serve to block meaningful changes to help workers in America. (One bad sign: Trump says he’s looking forward to working with Schumer again.)

An old friend and Democrat described Jeffries as an “odious hack,” to which I sent this reply:

Yes, just so. If the Democrats choose two “odious hacks” as their leaders in the House and Senate, I fear nothing much will change—and we truly need real change. I’ve heard both men talk, and they are specialists in empty blather and sweet-sounding BS. It’s time for REAL leaders. No more bought-and-paid-for hacks!

What I fear is what Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader fear: a Democratic establishment that thinks business as usual is the answer. The dishonest approach of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker after the 2006 midterms and the demoralizing approach of Barack Obama after he was elected president in 2008. Incremental changes around the margins while serving and empowering Wall Street, Israel, the military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, the banks, all the usual suspects.

The comedian Jimmy Dore has a great joke about this. Imagine a boisterous political rally where Democrats have gathered, then imagine the following loud call-and-response:

What do we want? Incremental change!

When do we want it? Eh, whenever, no hurry. At your convenience.

Americans voted for real change, and men like Jeffries and Schumer must either lead that change, follow the lead of the American people, or get out of the way. I’d much prefer that last choice: get out of the way.

In my subtitle above, I asked how despicable Democratic leaders will prove to be in this historic moment of need. I thought about “dumb” or “detached,” but these leaders are neither dumb nor detached. They are compromised. They are corrupted. And to expect them to change, to expect them to embrace workers and a more populist platform of concerted activism, is, well, unwise to say the least.

My Democratic friend is more optimistic than I am and is willing to give the leadership a few months to show their true colors. He wrote to me that:

If they haven’t passed three major economically populist bills by April (say, major minimum wage increase, major wealth tax, closing corporate tax loopholes, expanding Medicaid and holding hearings/vote on Medicare for all, limiting/banning stock buybacks, reining in worst practices of private equity (PE) and raising taxes on PE profits, etc), then I’ll accept that this system is unredeemable.

My worry is that it’ll be too late by April to do anything if the Schumer/Jeffries wing once again prevents meaningful change. We must force the Democrats to push for real change now, to hit the ground running now, for them to have any chance of preventing our country from slipping further into despair and desperation and toward fascism.

Keep the pressure on, everyone.

Send in the “Coolers”!

Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, Report for Duty

BILL ASTORE

NOV 05, 2026

A favorite movie of mine is “The Cooler,” starring William H. Macy. Macy plays a sad sack, a loser, a guy down at the mouth and down on his luck. He’s employed as a “cooler” at a casino. Whenever someone is winning too much at the roulette wheel or at craps, Macy goes and stands near the high-rolling winner. Within moments, the high-roller starts to lose, and lose big. Macy is good at his job.

William H. Macy as “the cooler”

Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are the Democratic Party’s coolers. They’re being sent in by the house (the owners and donors in America’s casino-style capitalism) to cool any real change that might hurt the bottom line of the rich. And they’re good at their jobs.

Another “cooler” is the “liberal” New York Times. I caught this summary this morning of the Democratic Party’s goals come next year:

Congress. Chuck Schumer, the likely Senate majority leader, says job No. 1 is to bring down the cost of living for Americans. Democrats want to reverse Medicaid cuts, restore Obamacare subsidies, limit Trump’s ability to impose tariffs and curtail a war that has raised fuel costs. Trump promises he can be “Mr. Veto” if necessary. Even so, Democrats can force his allies into votes they’ll regret when the next election comes around.

Democrats also want to exercise their constitutional power to check the executive branch and conduct oversight. Now they promise to investigate crypto windfalls, well-timed stock trades and a wedding party for the president’s son bankrolled by a Kremlin-connected oligarch. One House Democrat said in a statement on Tuesday that White House officials should “lawyer up.”

Cooler, indeed. Basically, it’s a return to the Biden status quo. I like the part about curtailing a war that has raised fuel costs. Is that the worst part of the Iran War—that it’s raised fuel costs? And why “curtail” instead of ending the war? Isn’t the war illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and disastrous?

Also, I like the part about going after Trump and his family for profiting from insider trading and the like. Speaking of that, Nancy Pelosi and many other leading Democrats should also “lawyer up.”

Of course, you’ll notice what isn’t mentioned by these coolers. There’s nothing about raising the minimum wage, nothing about single-payer health care, nothing about ending wars globally, nothing about major cuts to spending on wasteful wars and obsolete weaponry, and most certainly nothing about cutting weapons and other “aid” to Israel as it pursues a genocide in Gaza.

Among rank-and-file Democrats at the moment, there’s a lot of positive energy. A lot of high hopes for real and substantive changes. But the house has already taken action—it’s sending in the coolers, because the little guy and gal can’t be allowed to win when those wins hurt the bottom line of the owners.

War, the Intelligence Community, and the Deep State

Judging Freedom in America

BILL ASTORE

AUG 24, 2025

Last Tuesday, I appeared again on Judge Napolitano’s show. We talked about the Russia-Ukraine War and President Trump’s efforts to foster a peace deal, as well as the so-called Deep State and (briefly) the CIA.

The show’s lede raises a provocative question: Can America be rid of the CIA? Anything is possible in theory; the problem is the sprawling size and enormous power of the so-called intelligence community, or IC. (This idea of “community” was already a euphemism in the 1970s, as the movie “Three Days of the Condor” reveals; I’ve always liked how Robert Redford’s character scoffs at the “community” conceit.)

There are eighteen (18!) agencies that make up the IC with a combined yearly budget just north of $100 billion. For all that spending on intelligence, America has not fared well in recent wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. A bureaucracy of that size and reach is difficult to corral and control, especially since its budget keeps rising. Threat inflation is a major component of these rising budgets; you’re not going to get a threat assessment from the IC that says, well, actually, America’s pretty safe, let’s spend money on infrastructure, education, and social uplift.

As Chuck Schumer once said about Trump’s efforts to challenge the IC, the community has “six ways from Sunday” to get back at the president. That is, of course, more than worrisome. POTUS is supposed to command the IC; the IC is supposed to serve the president while upholding the U.S. Constitution. The IC shouldn’t scheme to “get back” at the president—any president.

My guess is that Trump has learned that lesson from Schumer. He’s appeasing the IC by giving it more and more money. Meanwhile, a Trump loyalist, Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to exert a measure of control as DNI, or Director of National Intelligence. I can’t imagine the in-fighting going in within the “community” as Gabbard releases files that suggest elements within the IC put their thumbs on the scale against Trump’s runs for president.

Eighteen agencies, $100 billion, and less than impressive results suggest a deep state that is out of control and in urgent need of major reform. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden’s revelations show a power structure that is more than willing to illegally spy on and surveil Americans.

For democracy to prosper, Americans need privacy and the government should be transparent to and controllable by the people. Instead, the IC is shrouded in secrecy and Americans are the ones whose lives are transparent to and controllable by the IC. 

Of course, I’m not suggesting the IC is peeking under every door—unless you’re some kind of crazy dissident who believes genocide is wrong and the military-industrial complex is dangerous. You know—someone like Dwight D. Eisenhower.

RIP RBG, Advantage GOP

W.J. Astore

This summer I read a really good book: “Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law,” by Jeffrey Rosen. I was impressed by Ginsburg’s clarity, coherence, and especially by her compassion. The Supreme Court and the country have lost a giant.

Now, of course, Mitch McConnell has already vowed a Senate hearing for her replacement prior to the election on November 3rd. His rank hypocrisy and slimy opportunism are eminently predictable. But I really don’t blame Mitch. He’s just doing what swamp creatures do.

No — I blame the Democrats. When Mitch McConnell blocked President Obama’s SCOTUS nominee in 2016, Obama could have done something. There were options. But the Democrats assumed Hillary Clinton would win and she’d get to nominate her first Supreme Court justice, so they caved to Mitch’s obstructionism. That craven strategy got us Donald Trump and Neil Gorsuch. (And, later, the bonus of Brett Kavanaugh.)

Meanwhile, at the lower court levels, Chuck Schumer in the Senate has served as a rubber stamp for Mitch McConnell’s remake of the courts with ultra-conservative judges. Schumer, it must be said, is basically doing the bidding of his masters in the donor class, who are more than happy to see a large number of pro-business, anti-regulatory, judges being appointed to various federal courts.

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Republicans will doubtless nominate someone who’s the polar opposite of RBG. Someone without much compassion, a partisan hack no doubt, someone dedicated to overturning Roe v. Wade, even though the nominee will use the usual weasel words about respecting judicial precedent.

RBG’s death is a major blow, not only because we lost a great justice and an admirable person, but because it will unleash the Republicans to do their worst even as the Democrats will once again reveal their pusillanimity in the face of determined opposition.

If only more Democrats had the spine of RBG. Rest in peace, Ruth. You did all that you could to make this country a better place.