Qasim Rashid: Why Chuck Schumer Must Not Be Senate Majority Leader

Excellent piece and absolutely spot on! It’s centrist neoliberal democrats like Schumer and Jeffries whose all out fight against progressives and the radical changes long urgently needed that played a definitive role in bringing us Trump. Twice. They have long ago sold their souls to the donor class and feel no twinge of conscience to support genocide and be funded by AIPAC. Schumer and Jeffries must not be allowed to sustain positions of power within the party. This is so utterly critical to the forward momentum embodied in the blue tsunami of this past midterm election. ― Molly

Democrats just won despite voter suppression, gerrymandering, and purges. Putting Chuck Schumer back in charge is how we squander it.

By Qasim Rashid

Please understand how remarkable this week’s Democratic victory is—and how critical it is we don’t let Chuck Schumer muck it up. Democrats did not just flip an unprecedented number of red seats and states. They did it while combatting immense voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and the thousands of polling place closures that followed Shelby County v. Holder. (Closures in disproportionally Black and Latino communities).

The voters did their part. Now the party has to do its part. Chuck Schumer says he expects to be reelected Senate Majority Leader. If ever there was a way to kill Democratic momentum, it would be to allow Schumer back into the powerful position that enabled Trump to return to the White House with a Senate Majority. Schumer’s failures are well documented, and any insinuation that he gets credit for Tuesday’s wins is laughable at best. These wins happened not because of him, but despite him.

Let’s Address This.

The New Senators Have Already Spoken

We are now at eight senator-elects who have stated they oppose Chuck Schumer as majority leader, and do not plan to vote for him. This is the new era of leadership we demand. Among them:

Dr. Annie Andrews (South Carolina) will not support Schumer.

Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota) has called for new Senate leadership and will not support Schumer.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan) has called for a new leader.

Adam Hamilton (Kansas) will not support Schumer.

Juliana Stratton (Illinois) will not support Schumer.

Chris Pappas (New Hampshire) will not support Schumer.

James Talarico (Texas) will not commit to Schumer.

Troy Jackson (Maine) will not support Schumer.

As a bonus, Scott Colom should win his Mississippi Senate seat, and has remained loudly critical of the DSCC for refusing to support and back Mississippi. I cannot imagine he is too pleased with Schumer, who only entered the race in the final weak with nominal support. Listen, these are not Beltway critics. These are the senators-elect who just won in Kansas, South Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, Schumer recruited Alexander Vindman in Florida—who lost by double digits to Angie Nixon. He recruited Janet Mills in Maine—who didn’t even make it to the primary. He recruited Haley Stevens in Michigan—who defected after she lost the primary and supported MAGA Mike Rogers.

We need a Senate Majority Leader who reflects this new era. The aforementioned senators-elect are that new era. They gave Democrats the senate majority on the backs of working people. Their voices must be heard as they know first hand what the people want. And given that Schumer’s approval rating is 13%, what the people want is a new leader. Because it isn’t just about those who were elected despite Schumer’s failures, but those who were not because of Schumer’s failures.

The Seats We Should Have Won

Angie Nixon in Florida. Jamie Davis in Louisiana. Everett Wess in Alabama. All three lost by single digits. And again, Scott Colom’s race in Mississippi is coming down to a few dozen votes and ballot curing.

I’ll say it plainly. If Chuck Schumer hadn’t let his arrogance, incompetence, and racism interfere, and had actually supported Black candidates, we would have elected Angie Nixon in Florida, Jamie Davis in Louisiana, and even Everett Wess in Alabama. If Scott Colom had another $1 million, we wouldn’t be ballot curing right now.

We could have locked in four new Black senators and flipped four more red seats. Just imagine the brilliance of a 58-42 Democratic Senate majority. Given the Democrats’ favorable map in 2028, we could viably be in a position to single handedly break the 60 vote filibuster threshold. Instead, Schumer’s racism and incompetence won out, and three amazing Black candidates will have to try again in two years, should that opportunity even arise.

Progressives Win. The Centrists Were Wrong.

This ultimately boils down to Schumer’s complete detachment with the Democratic Party and with voters. He is a center right corporate funded pro-AIPAC politician. The American people are looking for populist, progressive, and principled public servants. For example, we were told that Michigan is purple and needs a centrist like Haley Stevens to win, and that a progressive like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed would lose badly to a Republican.

Abdul won by seven points. That is a larger margin than Trump or Slotkin in 2024, than Biden or Peters in 2020, than Stabenow in 2018, than Trump in 2016. The last time a President or Senator won Michigan by a larger margin was Barack Obama as an incumbent President in 2012.

These facts still won’t convince centrist consultants, because admitting Abdul was right kills their paycheck. Centrists pearl clutch—progressives win elections. And we need one such progressive in the Majority seat. Because the Senate Majority Leader controls what reaches the floor. This fight is not about one man. It is about whether the Senate ever votes on the bills that the American people want passed—including Medicare for all, ending corporate money in politics, and strengthening economic justice—all things Schumer either opposes or has wholly failed to pursue.

But Schumer has proven that he has no interest in taking the fight to Republicans. He’s already talked about “working with Trump” and “hoping Trump has changed.” Despite the historic mandate handed to Democrats by the American people—Schumer wants to work with a fascist party who despises the American people. Honestly, do you think Trump would ever discuss “bipartisanship” if Americans handed Republicans a generational election win? Not a chance. Chuck Schumer may as well be Charlie Brown with Trump as Lucy holding the football.

He falls for it every time, but the American people can bear no more.

Because meanwhile, the communities that powered this victory, Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and working-class Americans, have waited long enough for power that is truly theirs. They deserve a leader who fights for them first.

Who Should Lead Instead

If you follow my writing you know that I don’t just identify injustices, I provide meaningful solutions as well. We have far better options for Majority leader, and it’s time to embrace them. Here are just three for consideration, and there are certainly more:

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland flew to El Salvador to demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran prison. He flew to Egypt outside the Gaza border to report on Israel’s genocide. He has been a relentless progressive fighting for Medicare for All and standing up to Trump’s fascism. That is moral courage in the Senate.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has spent her career taking on the corporations and billionaires who rig the system against working families. She would be an outstanding pick as Majority Leader.

Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, who will be the first Indigenous woman in the U.S. Senate, is a true change agent. She has already called for new Senate leadership, and she embodies the era voters just chose. Some might consider her too young and inexperienced, but if “experience” is what guided Chuck Schumer, then no thanks. Flanagan has the vision, the courage, and the ability to communicate and coalition build to serve in this key role.

Whoever it is, the standard is simple: a leader who will back every candidate in every state, make voter protections the first order of business, and truly return power to the most marginalized of communities. Schumer has proven he is not capable of any of these things—it is long past time for him to go.

What You Can Do

Quite simply—raise your voice. Next month the Democratic Senate caucus will choose its Senate Majority leader, and they need to hear from you. They listen to pressure. If a Democrat represents you in the Senate, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell their office: do not vote for Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader. Then share this article with everyone you know.

This is the new era of leadership we demand. The American people have given our elected officials a mandate. This is not the time to slow down, but to lean in and demand results. Let’s elect a Senate Majority Leader with the courage and conviction to deliver.

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EXCELLENT ― Jermaine Fowler: 22 Hard Truths From the Midterm Elections You Need to Know

 Another excellent piece from Jermaine Fowler!

― Molly

A mandate is a loan. Here are the terms.

By Jermaine Fowler

A landslide tells you what people want, and it only matters if somebody listens.

On Wednesday I wrote that MAGA was always a dime-store merchandise line disguised as a movement. On Tuesday night the country spoke. Black women won, Latino voters came back, young voters turned out, and a Methodist pastor won a Senate seat in Kansas. They ran on affordable housing, universal pre-K and health care for everyone, and they won in states no Democrat had carried in forty years.

But a vote is a mandate, and a mandate is a loan, one the voters can call the first time a promise goes unpaid.

Here are 22 truths that shaped the elections and will define the future.

I. WHO SHOWED UP, AND WHAT THEY ARE OWED

1. The country’s blood pressure dropped.

For two years every fascist push alert spiked the reading, whether it brought a raid in Minneapolis, a pardon for a rioter or a purge at the NIH. Seven Senate seats flipped in one night. The country took the cuff off its arm and, for the first time since January 2025, it slept.

2. Black voters saved democracy again, and they want something in return.

Nine in ten Black women and almost nine in ten Black men voted Democratic on Tuesday. Black voters, the party’s firmest wall, are thanked every November and forgotten every January. They have known what loyalty buys since 1877, when Rutherford Hayes pulled the last federal troops out of the South and left them to the Klan.

A typical white family holds $285,000 in wealth, and a typical Black family holds $44,900. The largest survey of Black Americans ever taken names the causes as low wages, failing schools, and housing and health care nobody can afford.

Black voters want solutions aimed at them, including reparations bills, community investment, health care, an end to gentrification, a restored Voting Rights Act and a true overhaul of the criminal justice system. They want each one funded for Black homeowners and Black students and Black patients by name. The party has the list now.

3. Trump rigged the maps, and the red states turned anyway.

The Republicans redrew the maps in the middle of the decade, and they redrew them because they fear the people living inside them. Kansas sent a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1932, and Texas for the first time since 1988.

In Mississippi, Decision Desk HQ gave Cindy Hyde-Smith a 91 percent chance of winning, and Scott Colom now leads her by about a thousand votes out of nearly a million. By Oct. 29, Black voters had cast more than 160,000 more early ballots than at the same point in 2022.

4. It is 2026, and America is still counting firsts.

Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman ever elected governor. Gina Hinojosa became the first Hispanic governor of Texas, and Abdul El-Sayed the first Muslim elected to the Senate. In a casino ballroom west of Albuquerque, Deb Haaland walked out as the first Native American woman elected governor anywhere in the country and told the crowd, “It is our time.”

A first only measures how long the door stayed shut, and a non-white face in the doorway proves nothing by itself. Celebrating a first costs a party nothing, which is why parties celebrate so many of them.

Florida elected Byron Donalds its first Black governor, from the party that rejected AP African American Studies in his state’s schools. In May 2028, Clarence Thomas, who voted to gut the Voting Rights Act, is set to become the longest-serving justice in American history.

5. Stacey Abrams wrote the blueprint the whole party won with.

Georgia canceled about 670,000 registrations in 2017, and in 2018 it froze 53,000 more under “exact match,” nearly seven in ten of them Black. In purging Black voters, Georgia built the list that beat it.

Abrams lost to Brian Kemp in 2018 and kept building. Fair Fight says it registered 800,000 new voters, and in 2021 those voters sent Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate.

This year’s winners took her map and paired Bernie Sanders’s economics with Barack Obama’s language, and in the South they added faith. James Talarico studies at a Presbyterian seminary, and Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, beat Roger Marshall in Kansas.

6. Latino voters swung twenty points in two years, and a third of them still voted Republican.

Two years ago, 46 percent of Latino voters chose Trump. On Tuesday, 62 percent chose Democrats for the House. What moved them was the price of groceries and brutal ICE raids in their neighborhoods.

In Florida the vote split along national origin. Cuban precincts went Republican by seven points and Puerto Rican precincts went Democratic by thirty-three.

In Texas, nine in ten Black voters backed Gina Hinojosa, a Mexican American woman, while four in ten Latino men backed Greg Abbott. Latin America has a word for that, blanqueamiento, the old promise that whiteness pays whoever moves toward it. As one Latino commenter wrote under the Texas numbers, “My name isn’t Miguel, it’s Michael.”

7. A younger generation is taking power.

James Talarico is thirty-seven, and he beat Ken Paxton by 1.2 million votes. Rob Sand took the governor’s office in Iowa. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota turned down corporate PAC money and won anyway.

Voters under thirty chose Democrats by forty-seven points, two years after giving them eleven. This generation grew up with lockdown drills in kindergarten and student debt at eighteen, and every adult in power told them to wait their turn. In telling the young to wait, the old taught them to count, and on Tuesday they counted.

8. MAGA lost many of the men it was built on.

Men gave Trump a twelve-point edge in 2024, and on Tuesday they split 49 to 49. Latino men, the voters Republicans bragged about winning, moved twenty-five points toward the Democrats.

MAGA told working class men they had been robbed, and it was right about the robbery and wrong about the thief. At Trump’s inauguration the richest men on earth stood behind him on the dais. On Tuesday some of the men who voted for him changed their minds after realizing who has really been emptying their wallets.

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II. WHO FOLDED, AND WHO PAID FOR IT

9. The almighty dollar talks both ways.

Elon Musk’s $158 million bought Ken Paxton a 1.2-million-vote loss in a $573 million race, the most expensive Senate race in American history. That comes to about $130 for every vote Paxton lost by.

On the same night, Montana voters passed the Montana Plan 65 to 35, stripping corporations chartered in the state of the power to spend in its elections. The state Republican Party, the Chamber of Commerce and the oil and mining lobbies fought it, and Montana passed it while electing a Republican senator.

That is why Musk spent $158 million in Texas. That is why AIPAC spent $30 million in Michigan. That is why the Chamber of Commerce fought Montana. Each of them knows the voters outnumber the money.

10. Americans watched their money fund the destruction of Gaza, and AIPAC paid the price.

Washington sent, every year, under three administrations, $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel. The Gaza Health Ministry counted more than 70,000 dead by last November, and famine came to Gaza City in August 2025. Americans watched it on their phones every night.

AIPAC’s super PAC spent $30 million to stop Abdul El-Sayed. On Tuesday El-Sayed won the seat. AIPAC says it wins 98 percent of its races, so Michigan goes in the other two.

11. Americans are done paying Big Tech’s electric bill.

Forty-one data-center measures sat on local ballots on Tuesday. Gina Hinojosa called for a halt on new data centers in Texas until lawmakers wrote the rules, and she won the governor’s office.

After the sweep, Rep. Yassamin Ansari called for regulating an AI industry she called out of control, a pause on advanced AI and a ban on artificial superintelligence. Elon Musk mocked her on X with “It’s a brave new world.” Voters had answered him the day before.

12. Science has a future again.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in 2023 to “give infectious disease a break for about eight years,” and the NIH has since lost about 4,400 staff, and on Tuesday voters handed its purse strings to a Congress Kennedy no longer controls.

13. Voters on the left are done with symbolism.

Black voters remember which lasted longer, the kente cloth or the bill. In June 2020, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer knelt in kente cloth for George Floyd. The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that month and again in 2021, and the Senate let it die both times.

14. People want Schumer and Jeffries gone.

Senator Schumer, 13 percent of voters see you favorably, and 53 percent see you unfavorably. If 13 percent is enough to lead the Senate, then no Democrat ever has to win anything again. Senators-elect in Maine, Kansas and Illinois say they will not vote for you, and Michigan’s El-Sayed is backing Chris Van Hollen.

Hakeem Jeffries sits at 18 percent, and in August he met privately with Jared Kushner. Voters handed this party a majority to fight with, and they will not hand the gavel to the feckless.

15. The people who folded to Trump will be remembered for it.

Paul, Weiss, one of the biggest law firms in New York, promised Trump $40 million in free legal work. Paramount, the company that owns CBS, paid him $16 million to settle his lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview. Columbia University paid more than $220 million to get its federal research money back.

Susan Collins, Maine’s senator since 1997, voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh and to acquit Trump. On Tuesday, Maine voted her out.

III. WHAT COMES NEXT, AND WHO STANDS IN THE WAY

16. Democrats need to get to work now, starting with the Big Beautiful Bill.

The Congressional Budget Office says Trump’s bill will strip health insurance from 10 million Americans. On day one of the new Congress, Democrats can move to repeal the Medicaid cuts and restore the funding Republicans stripped from PBS and NPR. By spring they can pass the housing bill, bring five new states into the popular-vote compact and put every bill on Trump’s desk. Nothing in the Constitution stops them.

If Trump vetoes those bills, he buries every Republican with a future in politics. As one voter put it, the only reason to reach across the aisle now is to serve an affidavit, and the high road is closed.

17. Some Democrats will hide behind the veto.

To every Democrat who calls a bill pointless because Trump will veto it, pass it anyway and make him own the no, or step aside for someone who will.

18. Voters want the guilty in a courtroom.

“I am your retribution,” Trump told CPAC in 2023, and on his first day back he pardoned nearly all of the roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants. On Tuesday voters handed the word back to him.

They want the federal immigration agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in front of a jury. They want Elon Musk under oath for what DOGE did inside federal agencies that no voter ever handed him. They want the Trump family to account for more than $1.4 billion in crypto money in a single year. And they want the CEOs who stood behind Trump on the inauguration dais to explain what they bought.

In 1974 Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, and the country learned that presidents answer to a gentler law. A law that stops at the Oval Office is only a courtesy.

19. Trumpism is over, and its own people are running for the exits.

In September, Trump told the Republicans’ convention in Dallas to vote as if he were on the ballot, and so the country did. On election night he announced he would become “a Political Pundit,” and by morning he was blaming Fox News.

Ron DeSantis called the night “close to an extinction-level event.” Expect resignations and firings in the coming months, and expect the party’s lickspittles to scurry back into corporate boardrooms and think tanks.

20. JD Vance will never be president.

Vance stood behind Trump and behind the war in Iran, and in June nearly two-thirds of Americans told AP-NORC they were unhappy with that war. On Tuesday voters rejected Trump or the war, or both, and Vance had chained himself to each. On Wednesday he went on X to explain the loss, and nobody explains a winning night.

21. The next Democratic nominee will be a white man, and his name is Jon Ossoff.

Behind closed doors, party leaders will say two women lost to Trump and voters like Ossoff and his platform, and they will put their weight behind a white man as the only “viable” candidate. It will not be Gavin Newsom, and it will not matter that Ossoff says he has “zero interest” in the presidency.

22. Democrats have the power to end the Electoral College.

On July 19, 1787, James Madison told the Constitutional Convention that the Southern states “could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes.” So the founders counted the enslaved for the South’s benefit and built the Electoral College on that count.

States worth 222 electoral votes have already joined the National Popular Vote compact. On Tuesday Democrats took full control of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, worth 61 more. It takes 270, and they now hold 283.

Will they pass it?

Please go here for the original article, notes, & sources: https://thehumanityarchive.substack.com/p/22-hard-truths-from-the-midterm-elections