Joe Guzzardi: The roadmap for Democrats out of their funk

Published 11:00 am Saturday, February 22, 2025

If the Democrats are really as battered, bruised and confused as recent reports indicate, they should act immediately to remove Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

After the 2024 drubbing that Democrats were on the short end of, and with defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris permanently out of D.C. politics, Schumer is an omnipresent reminder of the party’s failure.

When last seen, Schumer was protesting in front of the Treasury Building alongside Maxine Waters saying, “We will win. We won’t lose,” a reference to Elon Musk’s DOGE. Yelling and arm-waving is a bad image for Schumer, 75; Waters, 86; Elizabeth Warren, at 75 another shrieking protester; and the floundering Democratic Party.

Schumer has been a congressional fixture for 45 years, while Waters has been around 36. Warren just began her third Senate term, though she’s been hanging around Washington in various capacities for three decades. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat’s 80-year-old minority whip, is a 42-year congressional veteran who will assumedly run for a sixth term in 2026. Durbin’s signature issue, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the unpopular and unconstitutional DACA, has been stuck in legislative quicksand for two decades. Some DACAs are now over 40, have protection from deportation, work authorization, jobs and families that include American citizen children.

The Democrats’ strategy is all wrong, as was their insistence the Trump administration represents a “constitutional crisis,” alarm that does not resonate with voters.

In tennis, after the match, the loser and winner meet at the net, shake hands, and pat each other on the back. The loser returns to the locker room, not grousing but committed to reviewing the match tapes, identifying strategically what led to his loss, and dedicating himself to practicing longer and harder to win next time. Before the upcoming tournament, the loser fires his coach, his trainer and his dietitian; he sheds deadwood.

Getting rid of power-obsessed, entrenched Schumer and Durbin would be hard unless former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is summoned. Pelosi put the skids to President Biden, her friend of 50 years, to end his reelection bid. Even if Schumer and Durbin retire or are pressured to resign, New York and Illinois will remain blue, but the rest of the 2026 Senate election calendar looks grim for Democrats, especially after Michigan’s Gary Peters and Minnesota’s Tina Smith announced their retirements

Looking back at November, woeful Kamala Harris deserves the lion’s share of the blame for her defeat. Harris was a bad candidate who ran a horrible campaign. Her candidacy was, as Democratic strategist James Carville said, like starting the seventh string quarterback in the Super Bowl. But the Democrats’ bench is wafer-thin.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar or any of the other possible candidates would have fared worse than Harris. They all shared the impossible task of winning while saddled with President Biden’s burdensome baggage — a border that admitted more than 10 million unvetted illegal aliens, national debt increases of more than $6 trillion and brazen disregard for the Supreme Court’s ruling that he could not forgive student debt, a decision he disobeyed when he subsequently discharged multiple billions in indebtedness, and then bragged about his defiance of SCOTUS.

On a nationally televised interview, the host asked Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson if Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had knocked on his door to present the Democrat plan. In the imaginary conversation, Jeffries would say to Johnson, “We agree that government waste and fraud must be eliminated. But we have produced a better plan you should consider.” Johnson replied to the interviewer that no one from the aisle’s other side had, at any time, reached out to him.

The Democrats’ undertaking should be to forget about President Trump and make a sound plan, promote it nationwide, and sell it to the voters. Statistics compiled in 2024 show that of the 210 million registered voters, 38.8 million are Republicans and 49 million are Democrats.

The new and improved Democratic roadmap should be to stop harping about President Trump and instead explain why Americans deserve your party’s vote.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.