Posted on 11/15/2006 12:12:55 PM PST by Liz
Exultant Chuck Says He’ll Veto the Next Alito; New King of Washington Promises Moderate Court; Rove-like, Plans Permanent Democratic Majority; More N.Y. Homeland Money, Iraqi Federalism
More than the inability to influence Iraq policy or the President’s tax cuts, Chuck Schumer says that the single greatest failure of the Democrats as an opposition party was allowing Samuel Alito to join the Supreme Court.
“Judges are the most important,” said Mr. Schumer, who orchestrated the implausible Democratic takeover of the Senate last week. “One more justice would have made it a 5-4 conservative, hard-right majority for a long time. That won’t happen.”
From now on, all the President’s judicial appointments will need to meet the requirements of Mr. Schumer, the Park Slope power broker who has happily accepted the mantle of chief architect for the Democrats’ effort to build a majority for the 2008 elections and beyond.
The Senator also intends, in the coming months, to rework the federal government’s funding priorities in New York’s favor, to steer the Democrats toward a radically new position on Iraq and, while he’s at it, to cement his position as the unofficially declared tactical guru for the national party.
And in case anyone’s wondering, yes, Mr. Schumer is entirely comfortable with this sort of power.
With his Gold Toe–stockinged feet dangling, the 55-year-old slumped in his armchair on Friday morning as if it were a leather throne. On his apartment’s front door, a neighbor taped up a front page of The New York Times heralding the Democrats’ success and scrawled “Congratulations Schumers!” across the cover.
The candidates that Mr. Schumer recruited, groomed and bankrolled had won a comprehensive victory over the incumbent Republicans, giving the Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate to complement a rout in the House. Since the election, Mr. Schumer has been awash in attention from the media, his Democratic colleagues and even from the President, who called, quite sportingly, soon after the results were finalized.
For Mr. Schumer, who was installed on Tuesday as Vice Chairman of the Democratic caucus and officially reinstated as head of the DSCC, the attention couldn’t be coming at a better time.
“I am writing a book, about how to build a permanent—a long-term majority,” Mr. Schumer said during an early-morning interview in the pink den of his apartment near Grand Army Plaza. He sat between a view of lower Manhattan and portraits of Democratic icons Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Al Smith. “I generally have an eye toward longer-term strategy and politics, and I think my colleagues rely on me for that.”
His book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle Class Majority One Family at a Time, will be released right around the President’s State of the Union address, and will fit neatly into the role that Mr. Schumer now envisions for himself as tactician in chief for the newly ascendant Democrats.
“I’ve always had some influence, and I guess now, because of what we’ve been able to accomplish, I have some more influence,” Mr. Schumer said. “So when I say we shouldn’t do this or we should do that, I guess people will pay a little more attention. Or go along with it, even if they don’t agree.”
Certainly, the party wasn’t united behind Mr. Schumer’s election strategy this year. He championed a traditional approach: directing the bulk of the party’s financial and logistical resources toward handpicked candidates in a few competitive races. Howard Dean, who heads the Democratic National Committee, advocated a “50-state strategy,” spreading money around toward the longer-term goal of making the party viable even in areas that have been Republican strongholds.
After the victory—the Democrats picked up six Republican-held seats and defended every Democratic one—Mr. Schumer hardly seemed ready to concede the point.
“Fifty-state is a good thing to do, but it didn’t help us in this election,” said Mr. Schumer. “My only disagreement with Howard is that he should help us fund taking back the majority, because it would make a difference with things like the Supreme Court. And he came through—he ended up giving us $7.5 million. We tried the honey approach rather than the vinegar approach, and it worked.”
--SNIP--
Republicans need to fight this jerk every chance they get.
Veto this........Chuckie Boy!
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