The TOI correspondent from Washington: Liberal Democrats are revolting against the party leadership for surrendering to president Trump on the issue of reopening the government without achieving their objective of extending healthcare subsidies. The mutiny in the ranks comes even as a new bill to end the government shutdown, supported by centrist Democrat lawmakers, headed to the house of representatives for a vote on Wednesday.
Furious Democratic lawmakers and activists, some of them on the radical fringe of the party, are demanding a leadership change, accusing NY senator Charles Schumer and other party stalwarts of capitulating before Trump and betraying last week's election mandate and polls that showed popular support for the Democratic stand.
California Democrat Ro Khanna, who represents the district containing Silicon Valley, was among those who called for Schumer to be replaced, as did a former aide to socialist senator Bernice Sanders, Saikat Chakrabarti, who is running to replace Nancy Pelosi from her San Francisco district. Pelosi, 85, announced her retirement last week after 20 terms (40 years) in Congress,
"After 40 days of holding firm... establishment Democrats decided to cave. Schumer and the entire leadership need to step down—and if they run for re-election, we need to primary them,” Chakrabarti, 39, a Texas-born founding engineer of the payment processing company Stripe, said. Primaries are inner-party elections where a sitting legislator can be challenged by a party rival.
A former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chakrabarti, is among the new line of progressive Democrats Trump calls the “radical left,” even though the Indian-American’s Silicon Valley and Wall Street career before he joined politics is said to have netted him a fortune of more than $ 50 million. Fired up by the Mamdani victory in the NYC mayoral election, many such young progressives seem to have had it with the Democratic Party’s geriatric leadership represented by Schumer and the now-retired Pelosi.
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Right now India doesn't love me, but they'll love us again, says Trump, saying trade deal is imminent The Democrat leadership is being skewered by a range of political commentators from liberal leftists to late-night comedians for handing Trump a win even as he was routed in the by-elections last week. "It's like watching your dad fold a poker hand with a full house because he's late for the parent-teacher meeting," the comedian-commentator Jon Stewart observed, while his confrere Jimmy Kimmel joked that "Democrats caved faster than a gluten-free cookie—brittle, disappointing, and leaving everyone with crumbs."
Although Schumer did not directly fold before Trump, he was undercut by eight Democratic senators who defected to join Republicans in a 60-40 vote to advance a stopgap funding bill that ends the nation's longest government shutdown without securing extended Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies set to expire at year's end. The measure, funding operations through January 30, 2026, now heads to the House for a vote as early as Wednesday, but the damage to Democrat unity may linger far longer.
The shutdown, sparked in early October over Republican refusal to extend pandemic-era ACA tax credits that cap monthly premiums for millions, has inflicted widespread pain: furloughed federal workers, delayed food stamps, and snarled air travel have frustrated Americans, but several polls showed support for the Democratic position and it was the Republicans who were starting to panic, particularly after last week’s election rout.
But the defecting Democratic senators said they felt the pain of their constituents acutely and therefore decided to vote to end the shutdown in the Senate – even though none of them are up for re-election in 2026. The measure has to be approved by the House, where Republicans have a narrow majority, before it goes to the president for his signature.
Rajghatta is author of Kamala Harris: Phenomenal Woman