Schumer Rejects Calls Within Party For Braver Democratic Leadership

The Senate minority leader also shut down comparisons between calls for him to step aside and last year's calls for former President Joe Biden to drop out.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer maintained on Sunday that he will not step down, despite Democrats’ growing anger at party leadership’s lack of urgency in the face of blatant authoritarianism.

The longtime New York senator recently received swift backlash from those within his party after abandoning his plan to filibuster the Republican spending bill ― instead voting for the resolution without first trying to negotiate aspects of it. All but one Democrat in the House united to oppose the bill, which was signed on Saturday by President Donald Trump.

Schumer again defended his decision Sunday while on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying he had a duty as a Democratic leader to avoid a government shutdown that he said would have been “15 or 20 times worse” than the continuing resolution and would have “no off-ramp.”

“Sometimes when you’re a leader, you have to do things to avoid a real danger that might come down the curve,” Schumer told host Kristen Welker. “And I did it out of pure conviction as to what a leader should do and what the right thing for America and my party was. People disagree.”

Welker pointed out the similarities between the current calls for Schumer to step down as Democratic leader with last year’s calls for former President Joe Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee ― a move that Schumer himself supported at the time. The senator rejected the comparison.