Chuck Schumer just taught Donald Trump that hostage-taking works.
Not because he had to. Because the framework he operates within cannot imagine doing what this moment requires: actually fighting power instead of managing accommodation to it.
The base is in open revolt. Gavin Newsom’s response was one word: “Pathetic.” JB Pritzker called it “an empty promise.” AOC reminded everyone that “working people want leaders whose word means something.” Chris Murphy admitted plainly: “There’s no way to sugarcoat what happened tonight.”
And Ro Khanna did what needed doing: he called for Schumer’s removal as Senate minority leader.
This isn’t just fury at a bad deal. This is recognition that the Democratic establishment is operating within a dead framework that keeps producing the same result: managed decline wrapped in sophisticated justifications.
Schumer’s calculation was pure technocratic management. The shutdown polls badly. Healthcare polls well. Get a vote scheduled, minimize political damage, trust that Republicans will take the blame when premiums skyrocket. Classic establishment thinking: read the focus groups, calculate the risk, optimize for damage control.
What he cannot see—what the framework literally prevents him from seeing—is that the fight itself mattered more than any deal. That people weren’t asking for better negotiating tactics. They were asking for proof that Democrats would hold the line on something. Anything. After Chicago. After ICE raids. After warrantless mass detentions. After watching Trump systematically dismantle constitutional constraints.
This was the test. Forty days to prove Democrats could fight power instead of accommodating it. And Schumer folded.
Symone Sanders got it immediately: “The hostage taking worked.” That’s the lesson Trump learned last night. That’s why Chris Murphy is right to fear Trump gets stronger, not weaker. When you teach authoritarians that threatening to hurt people produces Democratic capitulation, you haven’t minimized damage—you’ve guaranteed more hostage situations.
The establishment will produce sophisticated analysis explaining why this was actually strategic. They’ll point to the guaranteed vote, the federal worker protections, the political positioning for next month. They’ll treat this as a temporary setback in normal political competition.
But this isn’t normal political competition. This is one side attempting regime change while the other pretends it’s just another negotiation requiring careful positioning.
The base understands what Schumer cannot: you cannot manage your way out of authoritarian consolidation. You cannot focus-group your way to resistance. You cannot optimize yourself into fighting power when your entire framework is built on accommodating it.
The governors get it. Newsom fighting homeowner cartels in California. Pritzker calling out empty promises. They’re not waiting for Senate leadership to figure out what time it is. They’re building the alternative: liberal populism that actually fights concentrated power instead of explaining why fighting is unstrategic.
The progressive caucus gets it. AOC reminding everyone that people’s lives depend on Democrats keeping their word. Khanna calling for new leadership. James Talarico declaring “this moment demands fighters, not folders.”
Even establishment voices like Murphy understand something fundamental broke last night. When your own senator has to record a video saying “there’s no way to sugarcoat this” and “I’m angry—like you”—that’s not spin control. That’s recognition that the base has decided the framework is dead.
Forty days was long enough to prove Democrats could fight. Long enough to make Trump pay a political price for hostage-taking. Long enough to show working people that their leaders’ word means something.
Chuck Schumer surrendered all of that for a vote next month that won’t pass.
by Mike Brock, Notes From the Circus | Read more:
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[ed. For a detailed explanation of SNAP and how we got here, see: November 9, and November, 10 2025 (Letters From an American - Heather Cox Richardson):]
Seven Democrats and one Independent voted with all but one Republican to advance a measure that funds the government through January 30 of next year. It includes funding for military construction and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, and operations for the legislative branch, or Congress. Tucked within that last appropriation is a measure that allows the eight Republican senators whose phone logs were seized during former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to sue the government for up to $500,000 apiece. (...)
President Donald J. Trump did not want the shutdown to end this way. He was trying to use the pain he was inflicting on the American people to force Republican senators to end the filibuster and pass a series of measures that would essentially have made him a dictator. The Republican senators were clear they didn’t want to do that. And now, they haven’t. They chose a way out of the shutdown fight that did not support Trump’s ambitions. After nine months in which they appeared to do his bidding, that’s an interesting development.
Trump does not appear to be giving up his position on hurting the country easily. Late last night, three judges from the First Circuit refused to stop the lower court order saying that the administration must pay SNAP benefits in full, and today, the administration went back to the Supreme Court to ask it to freeze those payments.
Trump also posted an attack on air traffic controllers, saying to those who took time off during the shutdown “I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country. You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind! You will be quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job….” In fact, the country has a shortage of air traffic controllers.
