On Democrats’ July turnaround: The most consequential moment of this cycle so far was when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris.
And perhaps nobody on Capitol Hill had a better vantage point than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s known Biden for decades, including serving for 10 years together in the Senate.
Schumer has been loath to discuss his July 13 meeting with Biden in Rehoboth Beach, Del. During that one-on-one, Schumer warned the president that more Hill Democrats were ready to go public with demands that he step aside. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had given Biden the same message.
During our interview with Schumer on Wednesday, we posed this question: At what point did you know you needed to have that sit-down with the president?
His answer:
At the time, Schumer was getting an earful from Democratic senators who feared that if Biden remained the party’s presidential nominee, he would bring them down too. It was a downright terrible stretch for Democrats, who were in full-on crisis mode. The implication here is that Biden either wasn’t listening to Schumer’s caucus, or the president was being shielded from those views by his advisers.
Fast-forward two weeks: With Biden out of the race and Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee, Schumer was practically giddy when talking about the change in circumstances, claiming it was “like night and day.”
“The enthusiasm, you can cut it with a knife. It’s palpable, for Democrats winning the presidency, winning back the House and keeping the Senate,” Schumer said. “It’s just amazing. Everywhere I go, and all the people I talk to, it’s like night and day.”
It’s with this backdrop that Schumer is publicly upbeat heading into the August recess. In addition to Harris’ takeover at the top of the ticket, Schumer shepherded a landmark children’s online safety package through the Senate while also using floor time for messaging votes intended to help his most endangered incumbents.
And now the hard part: The Senate map is still as challenging as ever for Democrats, who are defending several seats in deep-red or purple states. West Virginia is all but officially gone already with Sen. Joe Manchin’s (I-W.Va.) retirement. Messaging votes on abortion and the child tax credit won’t make Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) any less vulnerable.
So color us skeptical of this prediction from Schumer: “We’re going to keep the Senate, and maybe gain a seat or two.” That would mean, with the exception of West Virginia, Democrats keep all of their seats blue and potentially knock off GOP incumbents in states like Texas and Florida. There’s no sign at all this will happen, of course, but Schumer needs to keep his colleagues and donors engaged.
Schumer is traveling to the battleground states himself; he’s fresh off a fundraising trip to Pennsylvania with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Schumer is also urging his in-cycle members to highlight the implementation of some of the big Democratic legislative achievements from the last Congress, including expanded broadband access in rural areas and new infrastructure projects.
“We’re not going to win those rural counties, but we’re going to lose them by less,” Schumer said. “For a president to say we’re implementing, it’s too broad. But for Bob Casey to say we’re doing the Susquehanna Bridge, or for Jacky Rosen to say for the first time the dream of Nevada to get high-speed rail from L.A. to Las Vegas… is incredible.”
But in several of the battlegrounds, especially Montana and Ohio, Democratic Senate victories will depend on split-ticket voting. Election analysts are divided on whether this phenomenon is as prevalent as it once was. Yet for Schumer’s theory of the case to prove true, that’s exactly what he’ll need in order to hang onto his majority.
Jet fumes: In the meantime, today is the Senate’s last day in session before the August recess, and the fly-out vote centers on the doomed-to-fail tax bill. As we wrote in Wednesday’s Midday edition, Schumer told us that his in-cycle incumbents are “very excited” at the chance to vote on it — regardless of the outcome.
“Our 2024-ers were very excited about having a vote on this bill — win or lose,” Schumer told us. “They’d rather win, we’d all rather win. But even losing is a benefit.”
Breaking news: The House Republican leadership won’t bring up the children’s online safety bill that the Senate passed with 91 votes on Tuesday.
A House GOP leadership aide told us this about KOSA: “We’ve heard concerns across our Conference and the Senate bill cannot be brought up in its current form.”
This is a big blow to the effort, which is spearheaded by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). And it comes just a week after Speaker Mike Johnson told us he’d “like to get [KOSA] done.”
