His party in the Senate faced a tough choice between inciting a governmental calamity or infuriating voters who demanded defiance of the president. So the minority leader cobbled together a small coalition of lawmakers to join the majority and push through needed fiscal legislation, only to unleash a torrent of outrage from his own side of the partisan divide.
That was the case in 2021 for Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. Then the minority leader, Mr. McConnell did what he thought was best in a bad situation, engineering an increase in the debt ceiling in cooperation with Democrats to stave off a catastrophic federal default. He did so knowing he would anger many of his fellow Republican senators and voters who wanted a confrontation with President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In joining with Republicans last week to push through a six-month spending bill, Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who is now minority leader, channeled his inner McConnell to make a similarly unpopular move to keep the government open when many congressional Democrats and voters were clamoring for a showdown with President Trump.
“Look,” Mr. Schumer told the panel on ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, “I knew it was a difficult choice, and I knew that I would get a lot of criticism for my choice. But I felt as a leader, I had to do it.”
One of the downsides of being a powerful Senate leader is taking the heat both for and from party lawmakers when decisions can cause a political backlash. Mr. Schumer is taking a real pummeling for what a wide range of Democrats see as a betrayal and a surrender of Democratic leverage by caving to Republicans and Mr. Trump.
Instead of spending the Senate’s recess week promoting his new book warning about antisemitism, Mr. Schumer canceled the tour in the face of planned protests and instead spent high-profile media appearances answering why he didn’t stand up to Mr. Trump and whether he should be deposed as leader.
Since he made his decision last week, Mr. Schumer has expressed confidence, both publicly and privately, that he did the right thing, though he may have been unprepared for the level of vitriol being directed his way.
Unlike Mr. McConnell, who seldom seemed fazed by attacks on him, or Mr. Schumer’s similarly thick-skinned Democratic predecessor, Harry Reid of Nevada, Mr. Schumer likes to be liked. It is undoubtedly quite upsetting to him to have so many in his party calling for his head.
But they are unlikely to get it at the moment.
While some of Mr. Schumer’s fellow Democratic senators are unhappy about the way things went down, some also acknowledge privately that a significant number of them wanted Mr. Schumer to do what he did to prevent a shutdown: In the language of Capitol Hill, they voted “no” but hoped “yes.”
Multiple Democratic senators were eager for Mr. Schumer to find a way to avert a government closure while also allowing them to vote against the spending bill and leave him as the recipient of the political backlash.
History suggests that Democratic senators are not going to start a campaign to remove him when, clumsy as it was, he did what many of them privately wanted.
As they assess last week, Democrats point to a couple of noteworthy mistakes by their leader.
First, Mr. Schumer counted on House Republicans being unable to pass a spending plan given their slight majority, figuring Democrats would then get more leverage to find an acceptable solution when Republicans fell short. But he underestimated Mr. Trump’s ability to cajole and intimidate House Republicans into doing his bidding, and Speaker Mike Johnson was able to squeak the bill through without leaning on Democrats as he had previously.
Second, Mr. Schumer’s fellow Democrats believe he changed direction too abruptly. He had announced one day that Democrats would deny Republicans the votes for the spending bill and then turned around 24 hours later and said he would vote to push it through to passage. To his critics, that was a head-snapping decision that came without adequate groundwork having been laid for it.
Mr. Schumer said he had no choice once Republicans showed no interest in a monthlong bipartisan funding extension. He says the Trump administration would have seized on a government shutdown to intensify its gutting of federal agencies with no way for Democrats to force the government to reopen — no “off-ramp,” to use his term.
“I assure the public, a shutdown would have been the greatest disaster,” he said on “CBS Mornings.” “We would have had half the federal government we have now.”
The parallels with Mr. McConnell’s situation in 2021 are notable. Facing a federal default that could have inflicted grave economic damage, Mr. McConnell cooked up a one-time deal with Mr. Schumer that allowed the debt-limit increase to go through without Republicans voting for it. A few Republicans, however, did have to vote for a preliminary step to clear the way for the increase. Mr. McConnell rounded them up, mainly from leadership and senators who were retiring, just as Mr. Schumer did last week.
The critical procedural votes were similar to Mr. McConnell’s experience in providing 14 Republicans for a 64-36 outcome. Last week, the procedural hurdle was overcome on a vote of 62-38, with nine members of Mr. Schumer’s caucus voting with him to set up the measure for passage, though just two of them joined Republicans on the final vote.
The condemnation for Mr. McConnell was just as swift then as it was for Mr. Schumer now. “It’s a terrible deal,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said, criticizing Mr. McConnell’s move.
Mr. McConnell insisted that he would not back another such procedural maneuver and that Democrats would be on their own in the future. Mr. Schumer faces a similar predicament with two other potential moments of truth looming.
Congress will need to once again raise the debt ceiling in the coming months and Republicans, despite their majority, might need Democratic votes to do so given the traditional unwillingness of many conservative Republicans to support any increase. A failure to win real concessions in exchange for any Democratic help could greatly intensify anger toward Mr. Schumer.
And the spending bill that has set off such rage extends government funding only through Sept. 30. Congress will again need to find a way to keep the lights on after that.
Mr. Schumer and his fellow Democrats are calculating that Republicans will have a difficult time approving 2026 funding bills that include spending cuts that either won’t satisfy far-right conservatives, or will be too much for Republicans in swing districts.
That situation could allow Mr. Schumer to play a better hand and have more influence over the outcome. But if there are strategic missteps of the type that Democrats say occurred in this latest clash, Mr. Schumer could find himself facing more serious calls for change.
