POLITICS: Toxic Dems Schumer, Pelosi get shut down – and Trump stands tall with one of his biggest DC wins

The collapse of Chuck Schumer’s shutdown gambit when seven fellow Democrats and one independent broke ranks with him serves as a humiliating bookend to the longest government closure ever.

It also simultaneously highlights one of President Trump’s most sweeping and crucial Washington victories over his most toxic opponents.

Ever since his first election in 2016, Trump has been thwarted, tormented, impeached and mocked by Schumer and former Dem House leader Nancy Pelosi.

And now he has turned the tables on them in devastating fashion, with Schumer likely to be dethroned as Senate minority leader and Pelosi packing her money bags to leave Washington for good.

They fancied themselves the ultimate gatekeepers and, backed by leftist media, never stopped trying to gut Trump’s presidency and neuter his powers.

They acted as if he were some illegitimate interloper who had no right to the office and the full authority of the presidency.

Underestimated

Both, of course, were big proponents of the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax during his first term.

Schumer infamously warned Trump in 2017 that by criticizing the American intelligence agencies for spying on him, he was courting a devastating revenge.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer said on MSNBC.

It was a chilling idea, that the CIA, FBI and others were prepared to punish a president who criticized them.

We learned later the agencies actually meddled in the 2016 campaign to help elect Hillary Clinton, yet Schumer seemed absolutely fine with the situation and never objected, even to the rabid effort to prosecute and imprison Trump during the Biden administration.

Pelosi would play an even more active role, by turning the Jan. 6 Capitol riot into an inquisition-like vehicle to try to put Trump in prison as a way to keep him from ever again seeking the White House.

Thankfully, they both failed, and now their long reign of error has come to a crashing end.

The conclusion to what the GOP called the “Schumer shutdown” and the widespread calls by Dems for Schumer to be replaced as their Senate minority leader cement Trump’s reputation as one of the best political counterpunchers ever.

As he put it on Fox Monday night, Schumer “thought he could break the Republicans, and the Republicans broke him.”

As he spoke, it became clear that his biggest and most persistent opponents were roadkill.

Pelosi and Schumer repeatedly overplayed their hands.

Among their mistakes, the most fundamental ones were to underestimate his extraordinary resilience, the loyal voter coalition he has assembled and his firm control of the Republican Congress.

They thought their relentless resistance to everything Trump would eventually pay big dividends.

Forcing the shutdown was just the latest maneuver, where they assumed that sufficient pressure would push Trump and congressional Republicans to surrender to their demands.

Their bet was based on the belief that legacy media outlets would, as they always do, blame the shutdown on Republicans and the polls would scare the GOP into making concessions.

Thus, Dems could reap big benefits without taking much of a risk.

Instead, the president cracked the whip and managed to keep the GOP united in their resistance to Dem demands for more spending on ObamaCare subsidies.

A bad bet

In the end, the only concession Republicans made was a promise to hold a vote next month on the issue, which is relatively worthless because nobody believes the vote is likely to lead to any changes in the status quo.

The lack of any concrete result explains why so many Dems and their media megaphones are spitting mad at the outcome and are calling for Schumer’s head.

He was the chief proponent of the shutdown, and got next to nothing except a major black eye for himself and his party.

His calculation was so off the mark that even much of the media didn’t play along this time because it was so obvious Dems were fixated only on rescuing ObamaCare and that Republicans were determined to say no.

Even in Washington, blaming the GOP for refusing to fund something they said they were never going to fund had zero logic or persuasive power.

For Schumer, the death knell of the flawed strategy came when he was unable to hold his caucus together any longer.

Continuing the shutdown when it was a certain dead end for individual Dems and a growing disaster for the party made zero sense to the eight who bolted.

They conceded that Republicans were united in their refusal to budge, and as failure seemed more and more inevitable, Schumer became the target of his party’s ire.

Among those who turned their fire on him is Congressman Ro Khanna, who told a far-left outlet that “Schumer’s no longer effective and should be replaced.”

He added that, “If you can’t lead the fight to stop health-care premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”

Progressive groups also piled on and joined the call for Schumer’s head.

Bernie Sanders was an exception in that he called the end result a “disaster,” but didn’t pin the blame on Schumer.

Waning days

In fact, extending the shutdown, given GOP unity, would have been colossally dumb.

The 42-day closure was the longest ever, and caused enormous strain and pain for tens of millions of Americans.

Over 1 million government workers were furloughed without pay, food benefits were delayed for needy families and chaos swamped airports across the nation because of a shortage of air traffic controllers.

While Schumer’s collapse was unfolding on TV screens and front pages, Pelosi was quietly packing her bags for life after Congress.

Having announced that she won’t seek re-election next year, she leaves Washington a very wealthy woman, thanks to a years-long spree of suspiciously successful stock trades.

She’s taking the money and (not) running, while Schumer’s lost the confidence of his flock and faces an uncertain future.

A pariah to both parties, he’s now effectively a party of one.

That’s not to say he can’t be an influential voice in New York.

Schumer alone among top city and state Dems refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani, the socialist antisemite who will be Gotham’s next mayor.

It was a bold and unexpected move by Schumer and a reminder that he used to be a moderate Dem. Perhaps his decline in Washington will mark the start of a renewed focus on the city and state, where his party has become dangerously radicalized.

At 75, he has three years left in his fifth term.

If he were so inclined, using that time to become a voice of restraint in New York could be a useful end to his long career.