Democrats Kill Hope (Again)

Chuck Schumer Reboots The Montreal Screwjob

Anakin Kills The Younglings, Schumer Style

Last Tuesday, nearly a year into Donald Trump’s second term, voters turned out in droves to express their opposition to his agenda. In multiple states Republicans faced political punishment for months of destruction, abuse, and discrimination. Glimmers of hope that were suppressed on Election Day 2024 began to emerge.

And in less than a week, Senate Democrats killed all the hope. There is a very clear propaganda campaign in effect right now to portray the cadre of 8 Democrats helping Republicans to reopen the government and cut health care as a rogue group. Don’t fall for it. This is an operation engineered by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who over the years has shown himself to be the Republican Party’s best partner and voter suppression agent in the Senate.

In wrestling the Montreal Screwjob is a famous infamous moment, when WWE owner Vince McMahon suddenly stripped away the title from Bret “Hitman” Hart during a match where Hart had been told he would win. Schumer keeps doing the same to Democratic voters.

Senate Democrats have over the years shown themselves to be some of the least adept practitioners of basic politics, and their default is almost always to screw over the public. They will cave at nearly the first Republican sign of resistance. They vote over and over again to confirm thoroughly unqualified Republican nominees, and the best they can ever offer is theatrical opposition – making grandiose but procedurally ineffective floor speeches while humbly voting to proceed on the GOP agenda.

Voters don’t like what Trump and Republicans are doing to America, but the Democrats seem deadest on helping them anyways. Schumer is in love with a conservative approach, a way of looking at the world that always prioritizes rocking the boat as little as possible while giving off the aroma of progress. I don’t think this can hold and it certainly shouldn’t.

Democratic leadership thrives on the (very real) fear their voters have for conservatism. The successful calculus they’ve used for years to keep those voters in line is the threat that not showing up to vote for Democrats, no matter the level of disappointment, is worse than empowering the GOP agenda.

But the display we’ve just seen (along with many others) tells voters that even when they turn up to oppose the GOP, the Democrats will just vote to pass the Republican agenda anyway. Telling someone in this clear of a voice that their votes simply do not matter is a level of voter suppression that ranks up there with armed poll watchers.

“The Republicans are worse” has never been a very good rallying cry but it embodies the inherent weakness of the Democratic Party. Candidates who have adopted the mantra that better things are possible and that Democrats don’t have to exist just as a counter to GOP action but who represent new ideas themselves, have been successful. We find ourselves at a new crossroads.

Schumer and the old way of thinking have never worked but faced with Trump’s pivot to extreme fascism and the Republican Party’s embrace of it, his style is actively destructive. The party is at a breaking point, and it is completely the fault of the establishment leadership.

It’s past time to break them or else our hope will completely fade away.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on BlueSky @owillis.bsky.social

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