News

Chuck Schumer Prepares Conciliatory ‘Big Tent’ Approach for Trump Age

Image by Getty Images

By Daniel J. Solomon January 3, 2017

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will have a tall order in the next months opposing President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle signal parts of his predecessor’s legacy. And if the first signs are a good indicator, he’s playing nice with his fellow Senate Democrats in order to hold the caucus together.

“This is one of Chuck Schumer’s real strengths. He believes in a big-tent approach,” Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, who will the Senate Dems’ policy and messaging arm, told Politico. “He likes to brainstorm and hear from everyone so he feels he can make the best decision.”

To that end, Schumer is assembling the biggest leadership teams in recent memory, spanning the gamut from left wing populists like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to blue dog Democrats like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. When the leadership team meets every week, more than a dozen Senate Democrats are set to be in attendance. Half of the slots have been reserved for women.

According to the Politico story, Schumer wants to find common ground with Republicans when possible shore up vulnerable Democratic incumbents such as Manchin, many of whom will be in the next midterm elections. During the lameduck session, he aided Manchin in holding up a spending bill that did not include federal monies for retired miners, a large constituency in West Virginia.

Sanders, the caucus’ new chairman for outreach, praised Schumer’s Capitol Hill strategy, but cautioned that it had to be accompanied by a strong play to the grassroots. “Obviously what happens inside the Beltway is enormously important and we have got to fight for progressive legislation here,” he told Politico. “But we are not gonna be successful unless we rally millions of people to demand that Congress start representing all Americans and not just the 1 percent.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO