Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has done the near impossible: unite the moderate and left wings of the Democratic Party. Against him, that is.
In the hours after Schumer announced his caucus would not stand in the way of the Republican-led government funding bill — likely handing a major victory to Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump — it was hard to find any Democrat outside the Senate chamber who thought the move was a good idea. Bitter rivals over the long-term future of the Democratic Party came to the same conclusion about the current state of things.
“Seems like even the moderates hate Chuck,” a strategist from the party’s far left gleefully texted NOTUS. “Wonder what Third Way’s take is now!”
“The choice is whether to lose slow or lose fast,” said Third Way’s Jim Kessler. “Schumer chose fast.” The centrist group leader did try to find a middle passage between Senate Democrats’ actions and the collective groan from party allies watching on C-SPAN. But there was no praise for letting the spending bill pass.
“Wherever Democrats were on the shutdown, we have to keep our eyes on the prize,” Kessler said. “We will need Democrats all across the country to keep the pressure on Trump and GOP lawmakers.”
But for now, party members isolated in MAGA country, who are often the first to blame the activist left for making Democrats unpalatable, are saying the same things as Democrats from the country’s bluest enclaves.
“I found Schumer’s number, I was able to Google it, and left him a message,” said Jeri Shepherd, a former Democratic National Committee member and chair of Weld County Democrats in a ruby red part of Colorado. “I even managed not to cuss or use any F bombs, but I did leave him a message. I’m making clear my displeasure with him.”
Left-leaning groups took their ire to where Schumer lives and works, with one group holding a protest outside his Brooklyn, New York, home and another, the climate-focused Sunrise Movement, staging a brief sit-in at his office. Pass the Torch, the Democratic activist group last seen urging Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race last year, called on Schumer to resign as leader. Voters of Tomorrow, a progressive Gen Z-led activist group, told NOTUS it has organized for youth activists to send more than 50,000 emails to senators on Friday morning alone.
“This is not ideological, it’s about who is willing to fight to defend the needs of voters and who is willing to hand the keys to our destruction over to Musk and Trump,” said Usamah Andrabi of Justice Democrats. “The only person thanking Chuck Schumer right now is Donald Trump.”
Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
Much of the outrage from grassroots organizers has reached the attention of party leaders around the country. Washington State Democratic Party chair and DNC associate chair Shasti Conrad told NOTUS that Schumer’s decision led to incoming calls from several disappointed state party donors and grassroots leaders who “just want to see real leadership.”
“They’re frustrated and let down and constantly the refrain is just feeling like there’s some leadership missing,” Conrad said.
The old guard is not all with Schumer either. All but one Democrat in the House voted to oppose the funding bill, and Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among those to cast her vote against it. She torched her Senate colleagues who said they would vote for the bill.
“Let’s be clear: Neither is a good option for the American people,” Pelosi said in a statement that quickly went viral. “But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
Spending negotiations — or the lack thereof on the part of Democrats — has ushered in a palpable feeling of dismay across the country.
“The Democratic Party brand is at its lowest in two generations. Do you recover from that by voting for a very destructive budget that does violence to all the values and people you claim to protect?” said Raj Goyle, a former Kansas lawmaker and Democratic strategist. “It makes no sense.”
Between President Donald Trump’s executive orders and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts, the Democratic base is feeling dejected and angry, strategists from across the country told NOTUS. They said they want their elected leaders to fight back with whatever leverage they have. The lack of fight over the spending bill has in turn resurfaced the same questions about Democrats’ future leadership that dominated the party after Joe Biden gave up his presidential run last year.
“I get what Schumer means from a Capitol Hill standpoint. If we shut it down, Republicans will go rogue,” said Douglas Wilson, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina. “But, they’re already doing that anyway. They’ve dismantled the IRS, the Department of Education, USAID and fired thousands of federal workers.”
Senate Democrats may have helped find a new path forward for the party inadvertently. A powerful message next cycle may be “no to all of this.” And the candidates using it could be primary opponents. Rebecca Katz, co-founder of the Fight Agency and top strategist behind many of the freshest Democratic faces like Sen. Ruben Gallego, said new candidates may tap into a deepening ambivalence with the Democratic establishment.
“Schumer has a hard job, there’s no doubt about it. But there’s this feeling that Washington keeps saying, ‘This isn’t the moment for this, this isn’t the moment for that,’” Katz said. “There’s a feeling outside of Washington of, ‘OK, when the fuck is the moment?’”
On X, Katz spent Friday retweeting Democrats calling out their Senate caucus, like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender. “Democrats have the power to stop the cessation of power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk and they should use it,” Pritzker wrote in a statement urging a “no” vote on the spending bill.
“This is a moment for action. It’s about a new crop of leadership,” Katz said. “The next election might not just be anti-MAGA, it might be anti-everything.”
By midday Friday, only longtime D.C. hands were still arguing that a government shutdown would be worse chaos than what the Trump administration would cause.
“I think lobbyists understand that a shutdown in the Senate will hurt Democrats,” a lobbyist told NOTUS. “One in the House will hurt Republicans. So [Schumer] is doing what he has to do. Activists want a fight, even if it’s pyrrhic.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS. Calen Razor and Tinashe Chingarande are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Taylor Giorno contributed reporting.