The year of Chuck Schumer that wasn't

I hope that The Warning community will be a place of respectful and civil debate that helps start necessary and reality-based conversations. There is a strain of fandom that has taken root in our politics that has turned dialogue into whatever passes for screaming between Red Sox and Yankees fans in a mixed bar in the ninth inning of a playoff game. American politics is real life. It is a business full of nuance that requires the ability to hold contradictory thoughts on multiple subjects simultaneously, and understand how people unlike you might see the world.

I have read subscriber comments about my criticism of Chuck Schumer, the fact that I’m a conservative (for the record, I am not; I am a New Jersey moderate) and suggestions that I am playing “both side-isms.” I feel compelled to address the feedback. I also respect that you may agree to disagree with my opinions — and I want you to continue to share your perspectives within our community. Discussion and debate should be celebrated, but so should an openness to hearing different points of view than our own. This is exactly the type of forum that I hope that The Warning community is, and will continue to be.

So, here it goes…

Despite the proclamation by the Associated Press that this is “the year of Chuck Schumer,” I beg to differ. In my view, this headline is a pristine example of the access journalism mindset that has warped political coverage into a funhouse of deceptive mirrors and delusions.

The election wasn’t about Schumer’s strategic acumen. He deserves little praise for election outcomes he had little to do with shaping.

A more gracious man might approach this moment with humility and worry, given the Democrats’ razor-thin win. I also believe that the single greatest outside contributors to the results on Tuesday night were Oprah Winfrey and Tim Ryan.

Senator-elect Fetterman would not have survived his debate miscalculation against David McCormack. The power of Oprah Winfrey essentially condemning Dr. Oz as untrustworthy was a decisive event in the final days before the election. Some in Washington, DC, can believe it was a wave of “Schumercrats” coming home, but that is a world of fairies, dragons and floating cities. That world doesn’t exist.

There was a moment in time in August, during which a few million dollars of investment from Chuck Schumer could have finished JD Vance off in Ohio. It was one of those moments where decisiveness and audaciousness would have paid off. Ryan ultimately helped to save three Democratic House seats in Ohio. He also drew more than $60 million dollars in total Republican spending away from Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania where the Democratic Senate majority held narrowly.

Steve Schmidt @SteveSchmidtSES

I think it’s closer to $60 million. He fought alone and saved house seats as well. It was an epic campaign.

Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd

Though Tim Ryan lost, one thing Dems should laud him for is that his race caused the GOP to divert $40 million to Ohio instead of spending it in Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Arizona. Like in many fights, some make sacrifices so allies can win.

Ryan received almost no support from the national Democratic Party, while almost single-handedly resurrecting the message and spirit of the JFK Democratic Party. His final campaign speech and concession speeches are utterly unique and completely different from anything anyone else is saying in American politics. His message is worth listening to because it explains the closeness of a race in a GOP state where the top of the ticket Governor Mike Dewine buried his opposition by 25 points.

The AP story hailing the forthcoming Schumer era is shaped by a narrow and constricted worldview that exists almost singularly in a narrow corridor that runs from Union Station to Pennsylvania Station. It is profoundly out of touch with the sensibilities of the American people.

The American people very narrowly rejected a very particular type of political extremism in the aggregate. They rejected many — but not all — of an unprecedented group of deeply unfit and disordered candidates who would have been almost universally evaluated as such just 10 years ago. Case in point: Kari Lake lost by less than one point, not 30.

I want to make absolutely clear that, in my view, there is no equivalency between the Republican and Democratic parties when it comes to the places they hold in American life. The Republican Party is an institution controlled by a relatively small number of people that claims to speak for millions of people. The people who vote for that 168-year-old political party are not threats, though the institution has become the singular greatest threat to American liberty since the Confederacy. The Republican Party as an institution is controlled by a MAGA faction that is dripping in lies, malice, intimations of violence and corruption. The MAGA movement suffered a staggering blow on Tuesday, November 8, but it wasn’t delivered by Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party’s Washington, DC, leadership. It was delivered in spite of it.

Let me simplify my point. I once ran a presidential campaign that lost an election to Barack Obama. When watching President Obama on the campaign trail in the closing days I was reminded of his extraordinary talent. In the end, losing an election to a once-in-a-generation political talent shouldn’t cause much introspection. Barely losing or winning an election to the party of Marjorie Taylor Green absolutely should.

Roughly half the country looks at the Democratic Party and then looks at an extremist party and thinks about it. They think about it really hard and then by very narrow margins they decide it is the Democratic Party that is a threat to them. Why? The political system is broken.

Accusing every Republican voter as being racist and insurrectionist is as delusional as saying Trump won the election. We need to acknowledge and talk about the alienation that exists between a vast swath of the population that has turned from the Democratic Party after voting for Barack Obama a few years back. If the Democratic Party can’t compete in Florida, Texas, Ohio and the Midwest it isn’t a national party by virtue of the fact it can’t easily win 270 electoral votes. That leaves just one that can, and that’s the one filled with racists, extremists, theocrats, militias, hustlers, MTG and Donald Trump. What will keep our children and grandchildren safe from this threat isn’t maintaining Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader. It’s about finding another Bobby Kennedy and talking about how to fix what is broken by building something that is better, but also unimagined. That is the purpose of American politics.

I believe we live in an era of profound corruption. There is political, media and corporate corruption, combined with wealth inequality and preferential treatment for society’s elite — subsidized by the middle class — that has destabilized our society. The corruption is responsible for creating the conditions by which Donald Trump rose and continues to threaten the Republic.

The Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation have held political power in America since the early 1990s. It is time for a new generation of American leaders to rise. It is time to move beyond this era. I want to be clear: Senator Schumer isn’t a dishonorable man. Quite the contrary, actually. I believe his public service has been noble, and his conduct exemplary. I believe, however, that he lacks discernment, wisdom and connection to the country in this vital moment.

America is a young country run by old politicians. Isn’t it time to start imagining new frontiers again? The choice that the American people receive shouldn’t be between malignancy and stagnation.

Reform movements always follow eras like the current one. We are at the hinge of change. The American journey isn’t a reality show, and it won’t be written by Chuck Schumer. Buffalo Springfield sang in 1967 that:

“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”

There is a lot of wisdom in those lyrics.