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This is an adapted excerpt from the March 17 episode of "Inside with Jen Psaki."
In 2019, Sen. Chuck Schumer held a news conference on a very pressing issue: research into honeybees. The senator spoke in front of honeybee hives at a local farm in New York and talked about the worrying decline of active hives in recent decades.
Now, that may seem like a little thing, but as a senator for the past quarter century, Schumer’s been all about effectively magnifying the little things, whether that was holding news conferences to stop robocalls to seniors or to deregulate canned wine. There was also the time he warned of the dangers of tasty-looking Tide detergent pods — years before teens launched a viral challenge to eat them.
As a senator for the past quarter century, Schumer’s been all about effectively magnifying the little things.
My point is, Schumer was an absolute master at drawing attention to issues big and small. He was known as the man who invented the Sunday presser, and he showed how to dominate the Monday headlines. He also knew how to get things done in Washington. In more than two decades of service in the Senate, including nine years as the Democratic leader, he has helped pass — and protect — Obamacare, as well as background checks on gun sales. He shepherded all of former President Joe Biden’s major bills, and he raised millions for Democratic candidates and causes in four years as majority leader.
However, when the once-notoriously aggressive senator was asked by The New York Times last weekend about whether Democrats’ current media strategy was inauthentic and outdated, one part of his answer told you everything you needed to know about the Schumer of today. “We had, like, 60 influencers at the State of the Union,” Schumer said. “And they went on all the social media and, according to the people who tell me, because I get all these reports, it had millions and millions of views.”
Repeatedly saying “the social media” is, of course, its own dead giveaway, and “I get all these reports” about information that’s readily available to anyone on any of these platforms is the other.
When Schumer was asked why he was the right person to lead Democrats right now, his answer was basically that he had done it before. Michael Jordan was also the best basketball player of all time but would he be starting for the Chicago Bulls this week?
Look, experience is a good thing, but seniority and keeping people in charge simply because they have “done it before” should not be the party’s top criteria for leadership. In fact, doing things the way they’ve always been done is not working.
“The social media,” as Schumer referred to it, not the Sunday press conference, is how the majority of people communicate and consume news.
Case in point: Schumer backed down from a government shutdown threat and helped Republicans pass their funding bill last week. His argument was that a shutdown would have made it harder to resist Donald Trump’s takeover of the government. But in the process, he gave up all Democrats’ leverage. Republican leaders, including Trump, didn’t have to pay any price. Trump even thanked Schumer for “doing the right thing.”
Schumer was a hell of a party leader in his prime. He knew how to dominate media coverage, to raise a boatload of money and to twist the arms of Republicans and of members of his own party. But he is no longer in his prime. The Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party of the past. It’s not the party of John McCain or Mitt Romney — or even George W. Bush.
And Schumer’s own party is now so mad at him that he had to cancel his book events over the backlash.
These days, “the social media,” as Schumer called it, is how the majority of people communicate and consume news, not the Sunday press conference.
So where does that leave the Democrats at this moment? Well, instead of making tweaks at the margins of the message (which is important, too), maybe it’s time to throw out the old playbook and to start thinking about new messengers.