Personally, I do not like to reduce politicians’ support or lack of support for Israel to their personal religious beliefs or heritage, and I am only somewhat less reluctant to explain their behavior simply by looking at the constituency that they represent. Chuck Schumer, however, provides such an interesting case that there is just no getting around discussing these things in relation to his opposition to a deal with Iran.
With both the left and the right in Israel opposing the deal, it’s almost unthinkable that someone in Schumer’s position would support it, but he wants to be the leader of the Democrats in the Senate after Harry Reid steps down next year, and going against the president on this is going to jeopardize this prize that he has all but locked up at this point. In fact, the backlash was immediate:
The liberal activist group MoveOn is assailing Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for his decision, announced late Thursday night, to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran.
“Our country doesn’t need another Joe Lieberman in the Senate, and it certainly doesn’t need him as Democratic leader,” MoveOn political action executive director Ilya Sheyman said in a statement about Schumer, who is next to line to be the Senate’s top Democrat.
“No real Democratic leader does this,” he added. “If this is what counts as ‘leadership’ among Democrats in the Senate, Senate Democrats should be prepared to find a new leader or few followers.”
“In response to Senator Schumer’s decision to side with partisan war hawks, MoveOn.org’s 8 million members are immediately launching a Democratic Party donor strike,” Sheyman declared.
As part of that strike, MoveOn is urging its members to withhold campaign contributions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sheyman said. Within 72 hours after Schumer’s Thursday evening announcement, the liberal group is hoping to withhold $10 million in campaign contributions.
The action is a swift and aggressive response to Schumer’s announcement late on Thursday that he would vote to kill the nuclear deal with Iran, in a major break with the White House.
Most likely, the president doesn’t need Schumer’s vote. If he did, it’s quite possible that Schumer’s ambition to be Senate Majority Leader would trump his desire to be the leading representative of New York’s pro-Israel Jewish community. And, it should be noted, that the Jewish community that Schumer represents in the New York City area is considerably more hawkish in general (and on Iran in particular) than the Jewish American population as a whole which supports the president.
Schumer is probably wagering that he can get away with opposing the deal and still become the leader of the Senate Dems if the deal is ultimately implemented over his objections.
There really was no way for Schumer to please everyone here, but he’s come up with the solution that keeps his most ardent supporters happy and also doesn’t really have any consequence for the administration.
The next question is whether the gambit will work as intended. I think it probably will, not that I’m too happy about it. I’d rather have Dick Durbin or even Jeff Merkley lead the Democrats.
I do recognize that Schumer is the most powerful representative of Jewish community in the country and that the particular Jewish community that launched and sustained his political career expects him to oppose this deal. On the other hand, he’s a senator now, not a congressman from Brooklyn. He’s supposed to represent the whole state of New York, and I’d be willing to guess that the Jewish community of the whole state of New York is about evenly split on the issue. More than this, though, he wants to become one of the three most powerful Democrats in the country (after Nancy Pelosi and our eventual presidential nominee) and Democrats strongly approve of the administration’s focus on diplomacy.
Schumer has similar conflicts in how he treats Wall Street and the financial sector, and while I don’t fault him too much for protecting the interests of the people who put him in power, I don’t think that Schumer can adequately balance those equities with the needs and desires of the party.
Durbin has his own issues, but I think he’d do a better job. And Merkley would be my dream leader.