Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are hoping to clinch a unified Democratic government in November. Given how they have both managed their roles in leading the party, it would be a perfect example of failing upward.
Since President Trump’s election in 2016, both Pelosi and Schumer have been consistently outmaneuvered — either by their own party rank-and-file or by opponents such as Sen. Mitch McConnell. Where Trump’s political inexperience and inclination toward expanding government power should have made him an easy Republican with whom to compromise, Pelosi and Schumer have instead repeatedly run headfirst into the quicksand, only to be bailed out by Trump’s personal unpopularity.
Take the most recent round of coronavirus relief talks. Trump announced that he was walking away from the table, shooting himself in the foot and allowing himself to shoulder the blame. Yet, even as the White House has returned to the table, it’s Pelosi who is labeled as the biggest obstacle by voters. Even among independents, Pelosi is blamed by 20 points over McConnell and 34 points over Trump.
Voters likely remember that it was Pelosi who nearly torpedoed the first round of coronavirus relief talks in March or that her top accomplishment during her two years in the majority was a failed impeachment that Democrats have since tried to erase from the public consciousness. Her only success has been to recruit the centrist Democrats who helped sweep her back into the speaker’s office in 2018, and even they have been frustrated with her failed negotiations.
Like Pelosi in 2018, Schumer hopes to build a Senate majority on the back of Trump’s unpopularity. Like Pelosi, his leadership has consisted of blunder after blunder.
Schumer has been reduced to pointless political stunts, with no power to stop the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Schumer’s inability to recognize Harry Reid’s mistake in eliminating the filibuster has been his downfall. He’s been unwilling to try to ease tensions. He led Senate Democrats in torching their credibility by opposing cloture on the nomination of the obviously qualified Neil Gorsuch in 2017, before allowing his caucus to become the Michael Avenatti clown show in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh a year later. (Speaking of which, wouldn’t it have been useful to make the Republicans torch the Supreme Court filibuster amid the much more controversial Kavanaugh nomination?)
It might not even matter in the end. With the coronavirus pandemic erasing Trump’s economic advantage, his own personal unpopularity has become the focus of the election, dragging down Republicans and making Democrats the favorites to win the House, Senate, and White House. But one has to admire how hard Pelosi and Schumer have worked to give away their lead, only to fail upward into power.
