Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to help Republicans avoid a government shutdown last week triggered a barrage of fury from the Democratic base.
Grassroots activists were already frustrated by their perception that Democratic leaders were doing little to nothing to fight back against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their aggressive dismantling of government. That frustration ballooned into outrage when Mr. Schumer opted to break with the majority of his party and vote to let Republicans pass a bill that funded the government through September, but gave Mr. Trump even more power to enact his agenda.
Soon after that vote, one of the nation’s largest grassroots progressive organizations surveyed its member groups – then promptly called for Mr. Schumer to resign as party leader.
Why We Wrote This
As Democrats try to counter President Trump’s agenda, some are demanding a more aggressive response — including a change in Senate leadership.
The Monitor talked with Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin about why the group did so, what’s driving the Democratic base’s fury at their leadership, and where he thinks the party – and the movement – head from here.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
What do you think is the core factor driving the Democratic base’s anger with party leadership right now?
I think there’s just a chasm between rank-and-file Democrats and congressional leadership. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, even having gone through [the beginning of President Trump’s first term in] 2017.
The vast supermajority of Dems want to see Dems fight back, and a super-supermajority say that they’re not fighting back hard enough. It’s pretty clear what the problem is, and we’ve been trying to communicate this to Schumer and others for months now.
We’re experiencing a wave of energy at the grassroots level.
And these are folks who are responding to two things. One is the heinous MAGA agenda being pushed forward by Musk and Trump and congressional Republicans. And the other is a real sense of the [Democratic] leadership vacuum.
The House Democrats did a really good job on this fight. I’ve been plenty critical of [House Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries over the last couple of months, but he did a really good job there. And Schumer abandoned them.
He’s really out on the ledge here. And I don’t have personal animosity towards the guy. I think he’s done a lot of good work. But when 91% of our group leaders say Indivisible should call for him to step down, that’s a pretty clear mandate.
After Biden’s disastrous debate performance we did a similar emergency meeting of our local groups and asked them what Indivisible should do. And they were quite split at the time. Indivisible never called for Biden to drop out of the race.
That’s not what this vote was. This was not close.
Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto/AP
In terms of the fury at the party’s own leadership, there are some echoes of what we saw from the GOP base back in 2008, 2009, and 2010 as the tea party was rising. What would you say to those who share Schumer’s view that there was no endgame for this shutdown push and who are worried about the direction the base is moving?
The way this politically normally plays out is there’s a debate about who is to blame for the shutdown. And the side that is basically always blamed for the shutdown is the side that is asking for something more than a clean CR [continuing resolution].
I do not know why Chuck Schumer didn’t rally all 47 members of his caucus in front of the Capitol and say, “Hey, we’ll vote right now to open the government. We want to keep the government open. What we will not do is give a blank check to Elon Musk.”
Schumer is being praised by Republican strategists. He’s being praised by Trump. He’s being praised by congressional Republicans. He’s being praised by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. None of that surprises me. He gave them what they wanted.
You were very explicit when you formed Indivisible about stealing from some of the strategic and tactical playbook of the tea party movement.
It was the first chapter of the Indivisible Guide.
What strikes me now is the fury at your own party’s leadership. Do you think this moment and what direction this may lead the party could have some echoes of how we saw the Republican Party transform?
I would push back against any characterization of the current grassroots movement as a struggle between the left of the party and center or the moderates or the conservatives of the party. The backlash right now is ideologically diverse, very clearly.
There is a left-right spectrum, obviously, but there’s also a different axis here, which is to what extent do you think this is politics as normal, and to what extent do you think this is a unique crisis that demands a more aggressive posture?
We are not the left wing of the Democratic Party. We’re relatively ideologically diverse. And “normie” Democrats want to see their leaders fight back now, and expect them to.
So it’s not just that they’re disappointed. They feel betrayed and let down.
The reason why we’re in this crisis is because of the authoritarian overreach by folks who are treating a plurality, narrow victory as a mandate to massively undermine the constitutional republic. The reason why we are out here at all is because we want to stop this attack on our republic. But we can’t have a unified opposition party if our leaders decline to lead.
Where do you think this goes from here?
It goes to Chuck Schumer stepping down from leadership.
I think the response to that will be widespread acclaim and appreciation, a resurgence of energy behind the Democratic Party, and a belief that they’re actually taking seriously the concerns of rank-and-file members. I think they will be overwhelmed with the amount of support that they get from across the country in blue, red, and purple districts and states.
In the absence of that, I think the party has a serious fracture. And that’s terrible, because we can’t afford it right now.
Is this about a specific fight that Schumer threw in the towel on and the rage over that, or do you see this as a moment of broader shift in the direction of the party?
I actually think the public, the rank-and-file members, would be thrilled to rally around even the existing leaders of the party. It’s not an individualized, personality-driven fight. If Schumer had taken the hard stance here I think he’d have a massive amount of support.
This strategic leadership failure didn’t happen in a vacuum. This comes after months of Schumer declining to whip his caucus on nominations. It comes after Schumer allowed his caucus to rubber stamp a MAGA messaging bill on immigration, the Laken Riley Act. It comes after Schumer spent months declining to deny unanimous consent or use the tools of the minority in the Senate to slow things down.
But it is particularly egregious because we have been talking about this particular moment as being the point of leverage in 2025 for congressional Democrats.
And a main response from Senate Democrats up until this point has been, “Well, what do you want us to do? We’re in the minority.” This was a chance for them to actually use the power they have because the bill requires 60 votes.
You either lose faith in the Democratic Party as a vehicle of opposition to MAGA, or you get new leadership.
I think Schumer is an albatross around the neck of the party right now. He’s got a 27% approval rating. He can’t communicate on TV effectively. He doesn’t understand the 21st-century media ecosystem.
He will step down if there’s a cacophony of voices asking him to do so. And that would come from other folks who are organizing in this space. It would come from elected officials. And it would come from pressure from constituents on their own elected officials. So those are the things I’d be looking out for going forward.
We’re seeing Democrats grumbling behind the scenes about Schumer’s leadership. With Biden, that’s how it started. We eventually saw the dam break, with some Democratic lawmakers calling for Biden to step aside.
We haven’t had a Lloyd Doggett moment yet. We’ll see if it comes. He was the first to call for Biden to drop.
I think this is driven considerably more by the grassroots right now than it is by party insiders. But that has a way of trickling up.
