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...due to security concerns.

https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/chuck-schumer-ri...

Schumer book tour on antisemitism postponed
All of the Senate minority leader’s events this week, to promote his new book ‘Antisemitism in America,’ were postponed because of security concerns

How ironic.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/17/schumer-p...

“Due to security concerns, Senator Schumer’s book events are being rescheduled,” a spokesperson for Schumer said in a statement.

Websites for two of the events — in Baltimore and Washington — also noted Monday morning: “Senator Schumer’s book tour events during the week of March 17 are being postponed for security reasons. We will work to reschedule this event at a later date.”

Dope1: ...due to security concerns.

Bullshit. Schumer was afraid to face endless lines of unhappy democrats calling for his resignation as Minority Leader.

How ironic.

And possibly pretextual. He wants good PR for his book tour, not bad PR - and he's staring down the prospect of lots of protests at his events. So better to delay for a while until tempers cool, and it's much more palatable to cite "security concerns" than "most of the people who might show up to his events are really mad at Schumer right now."

Bullshit. Schumer was afraid to face endless lines of unhappy democrats calling for his resignation as Minority Leader.

LOL....the democrats have a DINO 🤭

and it's much more palatable to cite "security concerns" than "most of the people who might show up to his events are really mad at Schumer right now."

In the end, he IS just another politician. And the worst thing for a politician is bad publicity. They all lie at some point - but only a rare breed actually believe their own lies.

--Peter

LOL....the democrats have a DINO 🤭

Yup, LOLOLOLOL at him. The security threat would come from the endless lines of unhappy democrats calling for his resignation as Minority Leader.

As of 11 AM, he was still being touted as a guest on The View tomorrow. I wonder if that's now off as well.

And possibly pretextual. He wants good PR for his book tour, not bad PR - and he's staring down the prospect of lots of protests at his events. So better to delay for a while until tempers cool, and it's much more palatable to cite "security concerns" than "most of the people who might show up to his events are really mad at Schumer right now."

Sure. Because he did an extremely unpopular thing. I don't recall if it was here, or in a news article I read, but I saw a poll that indicated that the Dem constituency overwhelmingly wants the Dems to fight. No appeasement. Just fight. They've had enough of appeasement with an intransigent Rep party, and compromise that isn't really compromise. I tend to agree. Log-jam them. If they aren't going to include the other side of the aisle, then use the lack of supermajority in the Senate to filibuster everything. At least until they invite Dems to the table to negotiate...you know, the way politics is supposed to work.

Because he did an extremely unpopular thing. I don't recall if it was here, or in a news article I read, but I saw a poll that indicated that the Dem constituency overwhelmingly wants the Dems to fight. No appeasement. Just fight.

Of course. And Schumer didn't do that, because he knows more about how politics actually works than the "Dem constituency."

It makes things worse if you fight in the wrong spots. To take a recent example, progressives thought that Al Green's protest and the various little signs and protest stickers at the Joint Session were a worthwhile "fight" to bring to Trump. I'm sure they were correct in assessing that their "Dem constituency" preferred those performative objections to normalizing Trump by sitting there (and maybe cheering the kid with cancer). But that "fight" didn't actually do anything. It wasn't a fight. It didn't affect Trump at all. It didn't make the Democrats look firm or strong (I didn't see anyone on the Democratic side think that was a successful outcome). It didn't energize the Dem constituency, because it failed.

So if Schumer had voted down the CR, it wouldn't have been fighting - it would have just been failure. The government would shut down for 5-31 days or so, the GOP would not bargain, and the Democrats would eventually just have to approve the same CR anyway. Mostly because no one ever can use a shutdown as leverage. It never works. It didn't work for Gingrich, it didn't work when Cruz wanted to lever the shutdown into defunding Obamacare, it didn't work for the GOP trying to get border wall funding. Voters don't like it when the government shuts down, they don't want anyone trying to use it to gain leverage on policy matters.

Here, it's worse - because the shutdown helps the GOP. The Democrats would be "fighting" Trump the same way that Brer Bear and Brer Fox "fought" Brer Rabbit by tossing him in the briar patch. It's a good outcome for him. Once they passed the CR through the House, it would have been better for Trump to have the shutdown. All of the chaos in the federal government would get mixed in with the chaos of the shutdown, he would get to furlough all the employees he wants to fire instead of having to put them on administrative leave, more of them will have to resign because they're not getting paid, and if he can get the shutdown to last 30 days he basically gains massive new powers to fire tons of people. And eventually the Democrats would have had to vote for the CR anyway....which would just disillusion the Dem constituency even more than they're upset now.

It's just magical thinking. The Dem constituency wants to fight because they foolishly (and mistakenly) think they would win. But they wouldn't. Schumer knows it - he knows his members would not have been able to withstand the heat from being blamed for the shutdown. And while the Dem constituency thinks they'd be happier having fought and lost, that's not usually what happens - when you fight and it makes the other guy better off you end up feeling worse. They only reason they want to fight is because they're deluding themselves into thinking it would end with anything different than the same CR but Trump stronger for having the government shut down for a while. And they're wrong.

The Dem constituency wants to fight because they foolishly (and mistakenly) think they would win.

Probably some do. I am not that naive to think they could win. But if Reps can't get anything they want done, then they may have to consider wrangling some Dem votes to get legislation that can pass the filibuster. Wrangling Dem votes means giving them something. The Reps can declare victory, and Dems can say to their constituents that they got some concession of some kind.

Otherwise, Dems aren't even going to come out to vote. Why bother if your party won't fight? I do understand your point, but I think there is a balance between capitulation and winning. A middle ground that is neither, but shows your constituents that voting for you wasn't a blunder.

Cruz was an outlier. Even most of his own party didn't want him to do that.

i dont blame schumer either, although his messaging was poor when a book tour seemed a higher priority.

but i do blame all the dem pols, especially the ones like pelosi, piling on when they could be doing something else.

it was Dems message that a trump win would have catastrophic consequences, and i will say 100% dem voters have more than bought in.
so it is duty of every Dem pol to be in the face of every camera, making or responding on every media post, the details of each and every shenanigan.
i dont care how red, purple, or blue their region is, nor how much hatespeech gets slung, nor how little it affects MAGA. sure they can have other priorities, but this should be a 3xdaily task and built into their routine.

and in this, al green was just trying to get it into their cowardly hearts.
otherwise, we are hoping (futilely) for MAGA to fraction and destroy each other, when we know the matter ends as soon as trump takes any side.

Just for completeness...here's the article I read.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/dem...

I reiterate, the Dems can't win. But that shouldn't mean they just play dead.

but i do blame all the dem pols, especially the ones like pelosi, piling on when they could be doing something else.

Agreed. Schumer seems bad at messaging, as do many Dems. While criticism is certainly welcome, there does come a point when you're eating your own.

It makes things worse if you fight in the wrong spots. To take a recent example, progressives thought that Al Green's protest and the various little signs and protest stickers at the Joint Session were a worthwhile "fight" to bring to Trump. I'm sure they were correct in assessing that their "Dem constituency" preferred those performative objections to normalizing Trump by sitting there (and maybe cheering the kid with cancer). But that "fight" didn't actually do anything. It wasn't a fight. It didn't affect Trump at all. It didn't make the Democrats look firm or strong (I didn't see anyone on the Democratic side think that was a successful outcome). It didn't energize the Dem constituency, because it failed.
So if Schumer had voted down the CR, it wouldn't have been fighting - it would have just been failure. The government would shut down for 5-31 days or so, the GOP would not bargain, and the Democrats would eventually just have to approve the same CR anyway. Mostly because no one ever can use a shutdown as leverage. It never works. It didn't work for Gingrich, it didn't work when Cruz wanted to lever the shutdown into defunding Obamacare, it didn't work for the GOP trying to get border wall funding. Voters don't like it when the government shuts down, they don't want anyone trying to use it to gain leverage on policy matters.

If I read you correctly then, you think there is nothing that can be done for the next two years (at least) to change the trajectory, or at least ameliorate the worst excesses of what is happening?

I disagree. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I would think some “performance” could be used to energize the democratic base (in preparation for the future), to point out the rabid hypocrisy of what the Republicans are doing (“We’re the party of ‘get the government out of your lives <cough> abortion, school curricula, etc </cough>.

I agree that the feckless and occasional shouts or silly signs at the Trump speech were a failure, but that is a failure of imagination and of political will. It’s either that or we are doomed. I hope it’s not the latter, because that will leave me depressed for another 22 months, minimum.

If I read you correctly then, you think there is nothing that can be done for the next two years (at least) to change the trajectory, or at least ameliorate the worst excesses of what is happening?

There's lots of stuff to be done, but very little of it involves anything that Democratic members of Congress do on the floor of the House or Senate. They're out of power. They don't can't stop anything that doesn't "automatically" get stopped by the existence of the filibuster. Which is a ton of stuff, BTW, but because of the way the modern Senate rules are set up it doesn't require the Democrats to actually do anything. If the filibuster wasn't there, the GOP would be rewriting everything.

But they don't have power. The Democrats' strategy should not be worrying about, "How do we exercise the power we have?" - because they don't have any. It should be nearly entirely focused on "How do we get political power back?" The Democrats can't really alter what's going to happen in the next 22 months by the formal exercise of their authority as officeholders, because they have lost the last elections. That's what happens when you lose elections - you don't get to write the bills, you don't get to control the executive, you don't get to issue subpoenas, you don't get to have votes that matter. Political will is irrelevant when you're that far in the minority. The Democrats don't get to affect what happens in Congress over the next two years, other than forcing the GOP to unify their House majority and the omnipresent block of the filibuster.

Democrats should instead be working as hard as possible to change the political environment so they can win in two years. I've mentioned this from time to time, but IMHO literally the most important and consequential thing the GOP did to help themselves in both the 2022 and 2024 elections had nothing to do with Congress or even Trump. It was Gov. Abbott's initiation of busing migrants to blue cities in early 2022. The GOP changed the mind of the electorate. They had to endure two years of the Democrats being able to pretty much do what they wanted within the boundaries of the filibuster - but they released their centrist members to cross the aisle and support popular measures like the BIL and CHIPS Act, and worked to create conditions where they could win the midterms. They didn't fight in Congress - they fought in the electorate.

So do that. Go out and change minds, not engage in wishful thinking that there's an opportunity to resist what the GOP is doing over the next year. Set up an environment where Mike Johnson is genuinely concerned about losing the majority in the midterms so that he has to support his centrist members. Create a context where Trump is worried about losing the House, so that he trims his sails a bit on what he does and asks for. Engage in politics, not parliamentary fiddling that doesn't do much if you're in the minority in your Chamber.

Spoken like a true roll over and play dead Clinton possum.

What’s your Clintonite strategy of resistance? Hope John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett save democracy (if Trump doesn’t ignore them)? Cross your fingers for McConnell and three or four others see the light and vote to save the union?

Trump is already targeting Act Blue and democratic aligned law firms as adjuncts to terrorism. What’s your plan?

What’s your Clintonite strategy of resistance? Hope John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett save democracy (if Trump doesn’t ignore them)? Cross your fingers for McConnell and three or four others see the light and vote to save the union?

Trump is already targeting Act Blue and democratic aligned law firms as adjuncts to terrorism. What’s your plan?

Win back the House in the midterms. Get out there and change voters' minds about what the GOP is doing - especially among Black and Hispanic men, especially among young men. Engage in politics the way that the GOP did when they were facing a Democratic trifecta - attack the Administration for things you dislike, cross the aisle when appropriate, and get out there and make your case to the voters through incessant and continual outreach to voters.

Voting down the CR isn't "resistance." It's a thing the Democrats could have done, but it wouldn't have accomplished anything useful - any more than the little signs and Al Green's tirade did. It would only damage their own party and the people they claim to want to help (users of government services) - and would have put Trump in a better position than he is today.

Is that satisfying? No! It sucks to be in the minority of a trifecta. It sucks when the opposing party gets to control the agenda, write all the bills, control the Executive, and do whatever they want that doesn't need to surmount a filibuster. But the way to "resist" that is to win elections - not engage in a circular firing squad within the party after you've lost, because one faction is unwilling to damage the party's prospects further in order to make another faction have better "feels."

Democrats should instead be working as hard as possible to change the political environment so they can win in two years.

I think perhaps it’s possible to do both. I’m not sure what the “busing migrant to blue cities” equivalent will be/could be/should be, but I disagree that you have to lay down, prostrate, and let the Republicans walk all over you.

As Jon Stewart agrees:

(You could skip the opening 3:00 if you like, or even start at 4:00, but the takedown of Shumer’s total surrender starts at 7:00 in. Wherever you start, there’s something here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8OFrDQkfjM

“Democrats should instead be working as hard as possible to change the political environment so they can win in two years.”

This is quaint. It assumes there will be elections in two years, but the party in power is using its power to assure that the opposition won’t be able to contest an election in the future. Suspending habeas corpus, effectively debarring democratic law firms, defining civil protest as domestic terrorism, investigating Act Blue for fraud. All these baby steps point very clearly to the battle lines being drawn. Democrats like Schumer continue to politely play by the rules, biding their time until the inevitable pendulum swing, not realizing that the rules are changing.

We needed different thinking about how to confront Trumpism, but the sclerotic leadership of the Democratic Party has no answers for the change before them.

Where, for example, where is the coordinated attack—performative or otherwise—on the billionaire class? A sneering reference to “the oligarchy” is not enough. Fox News points out Schumer’s hypocrisy when he “worries about the oligarchs”. We know the centrists dependency on the billionaires is the reason for their constraint.

Crossing your fingers for two years is not a real strategy for addressing the change before us.

I think perhaps it’s possible to do both. I’m not sure what the “busing migrant to blue cities” equivalent will be/could be/should be, but I disagree that you have to lay down, prostrate, and let the Republicans walk all over you.

Refusing to do something damaging to your party and your prospects in the next election isn't "laying down, prostrating, and letting the GOP walk all over you." It's avoiding something stupid. If the only alternative to doing something that makes you worse off is to do nothing, then you should do nothing. Yes, doing nothing leads to bad outcomes - but if the only alternative is worse, then doing nothing is the right call.

There was no endgame for voting down the CR. If they voted down the CR, they would have just had to approve the exact same thing within one to five weeks later. There's no leverage. The GOP would not have paid much of a price for the shutdown, Trump would have been much better off with the shutdown, and the Democrats would have been buried under the pressure of millions of people suffering during the shutdown. You don't gain leverage by saying "no" to something you basically want. Democrats want the government to run, they don't want Trump to keep chainsawing it - so shutting it down is the equivalent of Brer Bear and Fox throwing Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. It's something they can convince themselves is actually punishing to the rabbit, but it's really more what the rabbit wants and is bad for them.

Stewart is funny, but he's wrong - and Schumer's right. You fight back against the Republicans by engaging in politics that will make them less popular and more likely to lose their seats. And shutting down the government doesn't do that. The fact that there isn't an easy and high-visibility alternative to voting down the CR that would make them less popular doesn't change that - the absence of a good alternative doesn't make the self-damaging choice any less self-damaging.

“Win back the House in the midterms.”

So you don’t believe anything is fundamentally changing, and that Trump and his regime won’t do the kinds of things they’re promising to do? The direct assault on habeas corpus and judicial review isn’t a prelude to an imperial presidency? Elections will solve this present assault on our constitutional order?

Gee, let me possum up and hope you’re right. Schumer is the man to get us out of this mess.

Crossing your fingers for two years is not a real strategy for addressing the change before us.

But neither is voting down the CR. Which also wouldn't have done any of the things you argue are necessary to be done. In fact, it would have made it worse - because shutdowns are unpopular, and the President has more actual authority to start whacking the government if Congress has failed to fund it than he does in ordinary circumstances.

No one is claiming that the Democrats have landed on a successful strategy for pushing back on Trump. That doesn't mean that it would have been smart to vote down the CR.

The sclerotic leadership of the Democratic Party has "answers" for Trumpism - win back power. That's not satisfying for the Democratic base, that wants to be told that there's a way for them to push back on Trump now. They want to engage in wish-fulfillment fantasies, that losing both chambers of Congress and the Presidency can't result in a massive change in the country, that there has to be a way to stop him if Democrats only fought more.

But it's not true. Pushing back on the GOP will be a long, slow, arduous slog that is unlikely to result in any cathartic moments of visible resistance any time in the next year - and if you don't want to be in the exact same position after the 2026 election, you need to forego the quick sugar hit of meaningless and ultimately self-defeating "protest" actions and avoid doing things that will be unpopular. Like forcing the country into a government shutdown.

“You fight back against the Republicans by engaging in politics that will make them less popular and more likely to lose their seats.”

But that’s the point, a Sclerotic Clintonite leadership beholden to billionaires and centamillionaires is not going to embrace a strategy that cuts to the heart what’s wrong with Trumpism. They are the reason that “not Trump” was the best we could offer last November. It looks like “still not Trump” is their strategy for 2026.

possum up

A new term in my lexicon. If you came up with it, congrats!
If not, congrats anyway!

Regardless, I’m stealing it.

So you don’t believe anything is fundamentally changing, and that Trump and his regime won’t do the kinds of things they’re promising to do? The direct assault on habeas corpus and judicial review isn’t a prelude to an imperial presidency? Elections will solve this present assault on our constitutional order?

Elections are the best option to address the present assault on our constitutional order. Certainly a much better option than voting down the CR. Win back power, undermine the popularity of the current administration, get control of the House again.

Interrupting the President's speech, holding up silly little signs - and voting down the CR - don't do anything to slow the "present assault on our constitutional order." Again, voting down the CR makes it worse, since the office of the President gets more power if there's no appropriations and we go into shutdown.

“The sclerotic leadership of the Democratic Party has "answers" for Trumpism - win back power.”

How?

There are alternatives to the “not Trump” platform the possum wing of the party wants to pursue.

But that’s the point, a Sclerotic Clintonite leadership beholden to billionaires and centamillionaires is not going to embrace a strategy that cuts to the heart what’s wrong with Trumpism.

I'm not claiming that current leadership's strategy is going to cut to the heart of what's wrong with Trumpism. I'm arguing that voting down the CR also wouldn't have cut to the heart of what's wrong with Trumpism, and would have made it worse.

On this issue Schumer made the right call.

How?

Step one is to not do self-destructive things like vote down the CR and precipitate a government shutdown.

Step two is to allow the GOP to own the inevitably bad consequences to Trump's chaos, rather than taking ownership of it by contributing to the chaos.

Step three is to recruit and support candidates in swing districts that are centrist enough to win a purple electorate, and to do tamp down the more extreme elements of the national party that advocate performative stances on unpopular measures that make it harder for those folks to win races. Excellent example from the GOP - what Trump did to the hardcore pro-life movement. They want their leaders to "fight" also, and wanted to get the national party to take an affirmative stand in favor of measures that would prevent abortions in blue states - and Trump basically declared that was a stupid and politically self-destructive idea and told them to F off, wrote all that stuff right out of the national platform.

Win the House. Don't focus energy on primarying safe seats in the Senate, don't spend time on internecine warfare over whether the country is ready for a hardcore progressive party (it's probably not). Capitalize on the general thermostatic trend among the electorate to turn out the party that's been given a trifecta, get good candidates and give them the room they need to run a race that can win in their district.

What’s the definition of insanity?

What’s the definition of insanity?

Repeating something and expecting different results.

Yet the result of the Clinton campaign was....the Democrats retook the White House, and had a governing trifecta. Which would be a pretty decent outcome.

Meanwhile, let's flip that back on claims that Schumer should have voted down the CR and precipitated a government shutdown. Each of the last times that a party has tried to use a looming shutdown as leverage, it's failed miserably. The Republicans tried it in 2018 to try to force border wall funding: they took the hit for the shutdown, got nothing, and just had to cave in the end. The GOP tried it in 2013 to try to force reductions in Obamacare funding - again, they were punished politically for the shutdown, got nothing, and just had to cave in the end and just accept the bill. The GOP tried it in 1995-1996 under Gingrich to change spending on health care and education: they also lost popularity due to the shutdown, got crushed by the pressure, and had to cave in the end and just accept Clinton's budget. Oh, and that one was so bad it helped propel Clinton to re-election in 1996.

So the big idea that Schumer's being criticized for not implementing is....using a looming shutdown as a leverage attempt? When that's worked out so horribly for everyone that's tried it?

Yeah, the definition of insanity....

The times have changed, my friend. It’s time to show the working class that the Democratic Party is their party. Clinton’s election was a disaster for the working class. NAFTA, PRWRA, Graham-Leach, “Reinventing” Government Initiative, various “Incarcerate black Americans” initiatives, the Telecommunications Act, etc. one looks at this list of legislative achievements under Clinton and wonders if he wasn’t a Republican president. Is it any wonder working class Americans have given up on your version of the Democratic Party in favor of good old fashioned fascism?

A CR fight would’ve at least been a fight, something the democrats have failed to show for far too long. Trump is going to trample the constitution and wreck havoc on working class people regardless of whether dems vote for or against the CR. Schumer fed the right wing narrative about spineless democrats. We were owned once again, accepting pennies on the dollar for our self esteem.

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