It seems to me very powerful that you facilitated an open, nuanced discussion and, by doing so, set an example of how NOT to “go black and white“ and start condemning one another for having different points of view
Institutionalists like Edwards simply can't comprehend the terrible situation we are in. What, exactly, would have happened if Schumer had insisted on a shutdown? Would even more asylees be illegally deported to El Salvador? Even more SSA offices closed down?
By not acknowledging that everything is totally broken, we increase our risk, which is already very high.
I still believe Schumer got it wrong. It does not surprise me that Mr. Edwards agrees with Schumer. They are cut from the same cloth and play by old, established rules. Sadly, the rules of the game have changed. Correction - there are no more rules.
Federal employees are being fired in unprecedented numbers without logic or concern for the damage it will do. Already, citizens are having difficulty accessing services. Passing the budget has not and will not stop this Administration from destroying essential services and our democracy.
As a government worker, I lived through three shutdowns - two Federal and one State. Since 1980, there have been 10 Federal shutdowns. Some lasted only a day, one lasted a few hours, others lasted a few weeks. The country survived, although I have no doubt people suffered.
If there had been a shutdown, the Republicans would have blamed the Democrats. The new Republican playbook is based on lies and gaslighting. What Democrats do, as far as MAGA news outlets go, is a fabrication of Republican lies. Facts do not pierce the MAGA news bubble. Basing our actions on what Republicans say is pointless.
If Schumer had simply made a counter-proposal that no one on either side could deem unreasonable, Republicans would have either owned the shutdown or given him a small victory.
I thought schumer was right—Trump would use it as cover to cover his own incompetence—when uour adversary is making mistakes don’t get in his way. But great admirer of Mr Kasparov.
Just out of curiosity - did this "thoughtful and balanced" former Republican Congressman vote with his party or against it, when they caused the longest government shutdown in history in 2019? I mean, the hypocrisy of these people is mind-boggling.
Thanks for the reply. That explains why he is so out of touch with the current situation. Applying a 1990s approach and thinking to the 2020s is right up there with Schumer.
Note the complexity of the arguments on whether Schumer was right or wrong. On he was right, Mickey Edwards lists these reasons:
1. "A government shutdown would have two immediate negative consequences."
2. "If Republicans voted to keep it open and Democrats blocked it, the public would have blamed Democrats—and with that, any effort to regain public trust would be severely undermined."
3. "But if you fight to let the federal government shut down and leave countless citizens unable to interact with federal agencies they depend on, no, you don't win. That’s not victory—it is handing the opposition a victory on a platter."
On Schumer was wrong, Gary's article listed these reasons:
1. "Viewed through that lens, Schumer’s decision was a strategic blunder. The funding bill was not the product of negotiation; it was an ultimatum. Trump, emboldened by a weak opposition, a compliant majority, and sycophantic cabinet, offered his terms with no room for debate. The proper response was not submission—it was to offer a reasonable counterproposal."
2. "Yes, the resulting shutdown would be painful. ... But therein lies the crux of my argument. Trump is already tearing apart the federal government. Americans are already living through a period of pain—political, legal, and moral. The question is whether to prolong this slow national decline or to confront it head-on. Let Trump overplay his hand. Let the American people see the cost of his chaos, unvarnished and inescapable. That is how you galvanize public opinion—not by shielding voters from discomfort, but by exposing the MAGA agenda for just how quixotic it really is."
3. "Schumer’s choice was not just a missed opportunity to wound Trump politically. It was a failure to inspire those who are desperate for signs of life among the opposition."
4. "I speak from experience. In Russia, the opposition was locked out of the system, left to protest from the margins while Putin consolidated power. American democracy still presents the opposition with the tools to fight back—control of funding, investigative authority, public support. But if those tools are left unused, they become symbolic at best, irrelevant at worst."
These are two good, strong arguments for both sides. Yet Schumer had to make a choice. How can we objectively analyze the very complex problem of what Schumer should have done?
That's what I did in a three-part article series. The first appeared on March 24. It's titled "Part 1. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats' Impossible Choice."
The subtitle was "The Dems faced an impossible choice between two evils on the Continuing Resolution. This led to considerable anger. Here we analyze that choice in an attempt to change emotion to reason."
I appreciate your analysis, Mr. Harich. I think it's a good way to frame assessments of the choice in its aftermath (I'm noting that your articles were written ten days after Schumer's decision was announced). Your method has clear strong points. Let me suggest one area where its application may be limited, and preface that by saying that in making a binary decision in the midst of so complex a situation, the decision-tree method can only be an aid to thinking that must involve qualitative summary knowledge in addition to propositions that can be reduced to quantitative measures.
One area where I think applying your method is limited relates to the binary of where blame for shutting down the government will be placed. I presume Schumer's thinking was not just a matter of guessing which party Americans will blame, but what the dynamic of assigning blame would look like. The MAGA network of mobilizing anger, the nature and strength of that anger, and the forms of expression that anger takes are all very different from the Democratic versions. The *type* of anger associated with blame has a major effect on the way the blame's impact plays out moving forward after the situation is resolved one way or another. I think Schumer wasn't just calculating that the odds were good that Democrats would be blamed; I think he was factoring in the possibility that the shutdown would open a spectrum of ways that blame for Democrats could effectively be tied to effective demonization of the Party on the basis of elements having nothing to do with the CR or shutdown, as compared to much weaker dynamics that would ensue if the GOP were blamed.
When you refer to Schumer's much higher estimate of damage from opposing the CR than your decision tree makes as "intuition," I think that points to qualitative calculations such as this one. The complexity of plural "intuitions" that lies behind the singular means that the time involved in identifying, assessing, and debating among party leaders the scale of each of the meaningful components of that intuition, and then performing an objective reduction that could be agreed upon, wouldn't be remotely possible in the given time frame. A abbreviated version would, however, have provided the leadership with a well packaged explanation of its choice to party members, one which would undoubtedly have simply been a pretty ad hoc rationale for what was ultimately an intuitive reading. This isn't to underestimate the value of the method you propose, I think, though, that its practicability in situations such as this is limited to rule-of-thumb use, rather than a fully adequate deployment.
Hi there Bob. Thanks for taking the time to read the articles and compose this really good response! I'm so glad to see critical objective discussions like this on Substack. This is what's needed to save democracy.
"... in making a binary decision in the midst of so complex a situation, the decision-tree method can only be an aid to thinking that must involve qualitative summary knowledge in addition to propositions that can be reduced to quantitative measures."
Agreed. Input to a tool like decision trees frequently requires qualitative reasoning. That's required when quantitative data (measurement s) is not sufficient. Here I used both to illustrate how use of an appropriate analytical tool could have helped.
"One area where I think applying your method is limited relates to the binary of where blame for shutting down the government will be placed. ... I think Schumer wasn't just calculating that the odds were good that Democrats would be blamed; I think he was factoring in the possibility that...."
Yes. And there are tools for doing that "factoring in" that aid the thinking process by making it more correct. In addition, once the thinking process is captured in a tool, it can be shared to all, and improved by all.
"The complexity of plural "intuitions" that lies behind the singular means that the time involved in identifying, assessing, and debating among party leaders the scale of each of the meaningful components of that intuition, and then performing an objective reduction that could be agreed upon, wouldn't be remotely possible in the given time frame."
This is entirely true if the Dems had never used a tool like decision trees and suddenly had to learn and apply it. But if they had been using tools like this all along, as millions of business managers are, at the start of the Continuing Resolution debacle they would have routinely started a new project using appropriate tools.
I just gave ChatGPT this prompt, which you can also do: "Can you give me a timeline of the key decision points in the Continuing Resolution debacle, where ultimately Chuck Schumer and other democrats voted with republicans to keep the US government open on March 14, 2025?"
The answer shows a timeline running from March 5 to the final vote on March 14. The bill the Dems were against was introduced on March 8. That was 6 days before the final vote. 6 days is more than enough time for an analysis team, working with the Dems, to analyze the choice using a tool like decision trees and other supporting tools, to evolve that analysis based on input day by day, and reach the point to where the analysis reflects consensus opinion as well as disagreements.
The Congressional Budget Office has long been using sophisticated tools to analyze issues and provide input for congressional and executive decisions. My point is the same thing is possible for highly complex decisions like the ones the Dems faced on the Continuing Resolution.
This is a good response, Jack. I don't in any way want to challenge the utility of this method, but I still have reservations about conditions affecting its application. CBO budgetary variables and economic impacts are different in kind from assessments of political contexts involving the impact of different rhetorical and information-delivery arsenals of adversarial parties.
Looking at the Part 2 paragraph starting, "The Democrats Blamed and Republicans Blamed branches are almost identical because both model what will happen in a shutdown . . ." illustrates this problem. Schumer may have framed his argument in terms of budget costs to the shutdown, but the long-term costs to Democrats of being blamed were far greater than the length of the shutdown: taking on the risk of that blame involved the risk of a greatly weakened ability to resist administration actions after the shutdown, to limit the administration's influence via the next election, and to prevent ongoing damage to fiscal *and* political integrity indefinitely. I would interpret Schumer's gut-based inflation of economic consequences on his qualitative understanding of those factors.
If Schumer had been presented with your decision-tree results he would have had a choice between using a number such as yours or a number that reflected these longer term calculations. Which is more honest; which is more defensible, within the party and outside? You'd need more decision trees to calculate those outcomes . . . (Well, you see where I'm going.) You'd either need to revise your tree to make it far longer-term and complex or simply build in a utilitarian constant (e.g., The best outcome would be to exaggerate the quantitative figure by four in order to limit the size and cost of a party-weakening internal fracture). In theory, it could be that the leadership did use the type of reasoning you advocate but stood with Schumer's exaggeration of its limited scope for these additional reasons.
Hey Bob, I agree with everything you say, good points. But let's look a little further at "If Schumer had been presented with your decision-tree results he would have had a choice between using a number such as yours or a number that reflected these longer term calculations."
If the Dems had been using tools like decision trees routinely, Schumer wouldn't have been "presented" with a tree. He would have been using and building a tree as he went along. He himself and other Dems would have made the major inputs, with assistance from the analysis team. There might have been several trees, to accommodate different camps. And so on. What the tress would capture, and do better with than any human mind, is the complexity of calculating a weighing all the main factors, and they way they interact.
And yes, the trees would get very complex. That's to be expected. Further more, the long the Dems used decision-making tools like this, the better they would get with them.
The CBO uses the best tools for its problem type, which are usually financial forecast models. A lawmaking body would use the best tools for its problem type, which would be different. Decision trees are but one example of such a tool.
Here's something I'd really like to see. What if the Dems asked their analysis staff "Can you analyze the big picture of what's going on? Why are so many American citizens and Republican lawmakers supporting what is clearly authoritarian behavior? That reduces the common good, rather than increasing it which is our constitutional job."
Well, I'd like to think that the analysis team would have said "Sure we can. We were waiting for you to ask. The best tool is the same one industry has long used for its own big hairy impossible-to-solve problems. The tool is root cause analysis. But this will take some time, since authoritarianism and democratic erosion is not a simple problem."
I feel very very strongly it’s a must that Schumer steps down. He is out of touch and he is hurting our democracy. Granted I have never been a big fan… but that’s because he’s never ever been a strong senator… he’s pleasant enough but he’s too comfortable and really has no clue what is necessary at this moment in time. I am a New Yorker he is a “type” a guy who thinks wisdom is all about compromise and being “balanced” in my opinion that is from another century. I actually feel he is a bit of a fool. And not good for us.
Kudos to Mr. Kasparov for presenting a good counter to his argument. Schumer was right for reasons he didn’t state at the time. We knew the economy was going to take a fall with Trump’s “policies.” Had the Dems blocked the CR, much of the public would have blamed them for the downturn in the economy, especially independent voters. Because Trump got his CR and the government stayed open, the public sees who’s responsible for the economic woes we are beginning to experience. It’s unambiguous. It was a tough call, and Schumer got it right.
I am with Schumer. Don‘t give Trump the opportunity to blame Dems in this case. Pick your fight wisely, this is the lessons for Dems during the last presidency Trumps.
Fully agree with your decision to publish former Rep. Edwards opinion, but just as fully find his line of reasoning out of sync with this extraordinary moment. Under a normal partisan administration, his point would have been well made, considered, and taken. But we are facing down an existential threat to democracy by an autocrat who has not just bent the Republican Party to his will, he has forced it into abject submission. Every day the Trump regime remains unopposed, people across the country are being denied services, losing their rights, and their liberties. This is not a moment for measured moderation. Not when people are being abducted by hooded ICE goons, hustled onto extra-judicial flights, and imprisoned in a hellhole that no one — not even hardened gang members — should be consigned to.
Sorry Garry, Schumer is far more in the wrong than just for the funding decision.
He highlighted lack of alternatives; he highlighted lack of alignment and agreement with the House. And he provided zero leadership on turning things around, inside and outside of Congress.
It’s phenomenal that you published a response that disagreed with your original article— 100% respect this.
It seems to me very powerful that you facilitated an open, nuanced discussion and, by doing so, set an example of how NOT to “go black and white“ and start condemning one another for having different points of view
Institutionalists like Edwards simply can't comprehend the terrible situation we are in. What, exactly, would have happened if Schumer had insisted on a shutdown? Would even more asylees be illegally deported to El Salvador? Even more SSA offices closed down?
By not acknowledging that everything is totally broken, we increase our risk, which is already very high.
I still believe Schumer got it wrong. It does not surprise me that Mr. Edwards agrees with Schumer. They are cut from the same cloth and play by old, established rules. Sadly, the rules of the game have changed. Correction - there are no more rules.
Federal employees are being fired in unprecedented numbers without logic or concern for the damage it will do. Already, citizens are having difficulty accessing services. Passing the budget has not and will not stop this Administration from destroying essential services and our democracy.
As a government worker, I lived through three shutdowns - two Federal and one State. Since 1980, there have been 10 Federal shutdowns. Some lasted only a day, one lasted a few hours, others lasted a few weeks. The country survived, although I have no doubt people suffered.
If there had been a shutdown, the Republicans would have blamed the Democrats. The new Republican playbook is based on lies and gaslighting. What Democrats do, as far as MAGA news outlets go, is a fabrication of Republican lies. Facts do not pierce the MAGA news bubble. Basing our actions on what Republicans say is pointless.
I don't see how a shutdown would have made anything worse than what we're living with now. It might have slowed down the dogies.
If Schumer had simply made a counter-proposal that no one on either side could deem unreasonable, Republicans would have either owned the shutdown or given him a small victory.
I thought schumer was right—Trump would use it as cover to cover his own incompetence—when uour adversary is making mistakes don’t get in his way. But great admirer of Mr Kasparov.
Schumer is past his Best Buy date.
Just out of curiosity - did this "thoughtful and balanced" former Republican Congressman vote with his party or against it, when they caused the longest government shutdown in history in 2019? I mean, the hypocrisy of these people is mind-boggling.
Mickey Edwards left Congress in 1993. So he was not on the floor to vote in 2019.
Thanks for the reply. That explains why he is so out of touch with the current situation. Applying a 1990s approach and thinking to the 2020s is right up there with Schumer.
Note the complexity of the arguments on whether Schumer was right or wrong. On he was right, Mickey Edwards lists these reasons:
1. "A government shutdown would have two immediate negative consequences."
2. "If Republicans voted to keep it open and Democrats blocked it, the public would have blamed Democrats—and with that, any effort to regain public trust would be severely undermined."
3. "But if you fight to let the federal government shut down and leave countless citizens unable to interact with federal agencies they depend on, no, you don't win. That’s not victory—it is handing the opposition a victory on a platter."
On Schumer was wrong, Gary's article listed these reasons:
1. "Viewed through that lens, Schumer’s decision was a strategic blunder. The funding bill was not the product of negotiation; it was an ultimatum. Trump, emboldened by a weak opposition, a compliant majority, and sycophantic cabinet, offered his terms with no room for debate. The proper response was not submission—it was to offer a reasonable counterproposal."
2. "Yes, the resulting shutdown would be painful. ... But therein lies the crux of my argument. Trump is already tearing apart the federal government. Americans are already living through a period of pain—political, legal, and moral. The question is whether to prolong this slow national decline or to confront it head-on. Let Trump overplay his hand. Let the American people see the cost of his chaos, unvarnished and inescapable. That is how you galvanize public opinion—not by shielding voters from discomfort, but by exposing the MAGA agenda for just how quixotic it really is."
3. "Schumer’s choice was not just a missed opportunity to wound Trump politically. It was a failure to inspire those who are desperate for signs of life among the opposition."
4. "I speak from experience. In Russia, the opposition was locked out of the system, left to protest from the margins while Putin consolidated power. American democracy still presents the opposition with the tools to fight back—control of funding, investigative authority, public support. But if those tools are left unused, they become symbolic at best, irrelevant at worst."
These are two good, strong arguments for both sides. Yet Schumer had to make a choice. How can we objectively analyze the very complex problem of what Schumer should have done?
That's what I did in a three-part article series. The first appeared on March 24. It's titled "Part 1. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats' Impossible Choice."
The subtitle was "The Dems faced an impossible choice between two evils on the Continuing Resolution. This led to considerable anger. Here we analyze that choice in an attempt to change emotion to reason."
https://analyticalactivist.substack.com/p/part-1-chuck-schumer-and-the-democrats
I appreciate your analysis, Mr. Harich. I think it's a good way to frame assessments of the choice in its aftermath (I'm noting that your articles were written ten days after Schumer's decision was announced). Your method has clear strong points. Let me suggest one area where its application may be limited, and preface that by saying that in making a binary decision in the midst of so complex a situation, the decision-tree method can only be an aid to thinking that must involve qualitative summary knowledge in addition to propositions that can be reduced to quantitative measures.
One area where I think applying your method is limited relates to the binary of where blame for shutting down the government will be placed. I presume Schumer's thinking was not just a matter of guessing which party Americans will blame, but what the dynamic of assigning blame would look like. The MAGA network of mobilizing anger, the nature and strength of that anger, and the forms of expression that anger takes are all very different from the Democratic versions. The *type* of anger associated with blame has a major effect on the way the blame's impact plays out moving forward after the situation is resolved one way or another. I think Schumer wasn't just calculating that the odds were good that Democrats would be blamed; I think he was factoring in the possibility that the shutdown would open a spectrum of ways that blame for Democrats could effectively be tied to effective demonization of the Party on the basis of elements having nothing to do with the CR or shutdown, as compared to much weaker dynamics that would ensue if the GOP were blamed.
When you refer to Schumer's much higher estimate of damage from opposing the CR than your decision tree makes as "intuition," I think that points to qualitative calculations such as this one. The complexity of plural "intuitions" that lies behind the singular means that the time involved in identifying, assessing, and debating among party leaders the scale of each of the meaningful components of that intuition, and then performing an objective reduction that could be agreed upon, wouldn't be remotely possible in the given time frame. A abbreviated version would, however, have provided the leadership with a well packaged explanation of its choice to party members, one which would undoubtedly have simply been a pretty ad hoc rationale for what was ultimately an intuitive reading. This isn't to underestimate the value of the method you propose, I think, though, that its practicability in situations such as this is limited to rule-of-thumb use, rather than a fully adequate deployment.
Hi there Bob. Thanks for taking the time to read the articles and compose this really good response! I'm so glad to see critical objective discussions like this on Substack. This is what's needed to save democracy.
"... in making a binary decision in the midst of so complex a situation, the decision-tree method can only be an aid to thinking that must involve qualitative summary knowledge in addition to propositions that can be reduced to quantitative measures."
Agreed. Input to a tool like decision trees frequently requires qualitative reasoning. That's required when quantitative data (measurement s) is not sufficient. Here I used both to illustrate how use of an appropriate analytical tool could have helped.
"One area where I think applying your method is limited relates to the binary of where blame for shutting down the government will be placed. ... I think Schumer wasn't just calculating that the odds were good that Democrats would be blamed; I think he was factoring in the possibility that...."
Yes. And there are tools for doing that "factoring in" that aid the thinking process by making it more correct. In addition, once the thinking process is captured in a tool, it can be shared to all, and improved by all.
"The complexity of plural "intuitions" that lies behind the singular means that the time involved in identifying, assessing, and debating among party leaders the scale of each of the meaningful components of that intuition, and then performing an objective reduction that could be agreed upon, wouldn't be remotely possible in the given time frame."
This is entirely true if the Dems had never used a tool like decision trees and suddenly had to learn and apply it. But if they had been using tools like this all along, as millions of business managers are, at the start of the Continuing Resolution debacle they would have routinely started a new project using appropriate tools.
I just gave ChatGPT this prompt, which you can also do: "Can you give me a timeline of the key decision points in the Continuing Resolution debacle, where ultimately Chuck Schumer and other democrats voted with republicans to keep the US government open on March 14, 2025?"
The answer shows a timeline running from March 5 to the final vote on March 14. The bill the Dems were against was introduced on March 8. That was 6 days before the final vote. 6 days is more than enough time for an analysis team, working with the Dems, to analyze the choice using a tool like decision trees and other supporting tools, to evolve that analysis based on input day by day, and reach the point to where the analysis reflects consensus opinion as well as disagreements.
The Congressional Budget Office has long been using sophisticated tools to analyze issues and provide input for congressional and executive decisions. My point is the same thing is possible for highly complex decisions like the ones the Dems faced on the Continuing Resolution.
This is a good response, Jack. I don't in any way want to challenge the utility of this method, but I still have reservations about conditions affecting its application. CBO budgetary variables and economic impacts are different in kind from assessments of political contexts involving the impact of different rhetorical and information-delivery arsenals of adversarial parties.
Looking at the Part 2 paragraph starting, "The Democrats Blamed and Republicans Blamed branches are almost identical because both model what will happen in a shutdown . . ." illustrates this problem. Schumer may have framed his argument in terms of budget costs to the shutdown, but the long-term costs to Democrats of being blamed were far greater than the length of the shutdown: taking on the risk of that blame involved the risk of a greatly weakened ability to resist administration actions after the shutdown, to limit the administration's influence via the next election, and to prevent ongoing damage to fiscal *and* political integrity indefinitely. I would interpret Schumer's gut-based inflation of economic consequences on his qualitative understanding of those factors.
If Schumer had been presented with your decision-tree results he would have had a choice between using a number such as yours or a number that reflected these longer term calculations. Which is more honest; which is more defensible, within the party and outside? You'd need more decision trees to calculate those outcomes . . . (Well, you see where I'm going.) You'd either need to revise your tree to make it far longer-term and complex or simply build in a utilitarian constant (e.g., The best outcome would be to exaggerate the quantitative figure by four in order to limit the size and cost of a party-weakening internal fracture). In theory, it could be that the leadership did use the type of reasoning you advocate but stood with Schumer's exaggeration of its limited scope for these additional reasons.
Hey Bob, I agree with everything you say, good points. But let's look a little further at "If Schumer had been presented with your decision-tree results he would have had a choice between using a number such as yours or a number that reflected these longer term calculations."
If the Dems had been using tools like decision trees routinely, Schumer wouldn't have been "presented" with a tree. He would have been using and building a tree as he went along. He himself and other Dems would have made the major inputs, with assistance from the analysis team. There might have been several trees, to accommodate different camps. And so on. What the tress would capture, and do better with than any human mind, is the complexity of calculating a weighing all the main factors, and they way they interact.
And yes, the trees would get very complex. That's to be expected. Further more, the long the Dems used decision-making tools like this, the better they would get with them.
The CBO uses the best tools for its problem type, which are usually financial forecast models. A lawmaking body would use the best tools for its problem type, which would be different. Decision trees are but one example of such a tool.
Here's something I'd really like to see. What if the Dems asked their analysis staff "Can you analyze the big picture of what's going on? Why are so many American citizens and Republican lawmakers supporting what is clearly authoritarian behavior? That reduces the common good, rather than increasing it which is our constitutional job."
Well, I'd like to think that the analysis team would have said "Sure we can. We were waiting for you to ask. The best tool is the same one industry has long used for its own big hairy impossible-to-solve problems. The tool is root cause analysis. But this will take some time, since authoritarianism and democratic erosion is not a simple problem."
I feel very very strongly it’s a must that Schumer steps down. He is out of touch and he is hurting our democracy. Granted I have never been a big fan… but that’s because he’s never ever been a strong senator… he’s pleasant enough but he’s too comfortable and really has no clue what is necessary at this moment in time. I am a New Yorker he is a “type” a guy who thinks wisdom is all about compromise and being “balanced” in my opinion that is from another century. I actually feel he is a bit of a fool. And not good for us.
Kudos to Mr. Kasparov for presenting a good counter to his argument. Schumer was right for reasons he didn’t state at the time. We knew the economy was going to take a fall with Trump’s “policies.” Had the Dems blocked the CR, much of the public would have blamed them for the downturn in the economy, especially independent voters. Because Trump got his CR and the government stayed open, the public sees who’s responsible for the economic woes we are beginning to experience. It’s unambiguous. It was a tough call, and Schumer got it right.
I am with Schumer. Don‘t give Trump the opportunity to blame Dems in this case. Pick your fight wisely, this is the lessons for Dems during the last presidency Trumps.
Fully agree with your decision to publish former Rep. Edwards opinion, but just as fully find his line of reasoning out of sync with this extraordinary moment. Under a normal partisan administration, his point would have been well made, considered, and taken. But we are facing down an existential threat to democracy by an autocrat who has not just bent the Republican Party to his will, he has forced it into abject submission. Every day the Trump regime remains unopposed, people across the country are being denied services, losing their rights, and their liberties. This is not a moment for measured moderation. Not when people are being abducted by hooded ICE goons, hustled onto extra-judicial flights, and imprisoned in a hellhole that no one — not even hardened gang members — should be consigned to.
Sorry Garry, Schumer is far more in the wrong than just for the funding decision.
He highlighted lack of alternatives; he highlighted lack of alignment and agreement with the House. And he provided zero leadership on turning things around, inside and outside of Congress.
This is what everyone is looking for:
https://substack.com/@ricknoz/note/p-161359019?r=ukln1&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Schumer still has to go.