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Good morning, friends. Prem here. Wishing a Happy Diwali to all of you, including Vivek Ramaswamy 😊.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we make the definitive case for Chris Van Hollen to replace Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader, liberal think tank chief Neera Tanden urges activists not to ask the forthcoming Democratic-controlled Congress for anything special, and Pete Hegseth could be impeached this week.
Fight Club
In the weeks leading up to the New York City mayoral election, Chris Van Hollen was angry.
Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, just upended U.S. politics, winning the Democratic primary and becoming the nominee to lead the biggest city in the country.
While Mamdani was impressing voters, many Democratic officials refused to endorse him, or continued to implicitly or explicitly undermine him. Van Hollen, who endorsed Mamdani in September, slammed them for remaining mum.
“Many Democratic members of the Senate and the House delegations representing New York have stayed on the sidelines,” he said. “That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of.”
The race, of course, was between Mamdani; Curtis Sliwa, the Republican; and Andrew Cuomo, an alleged sexual abuser funded by Trump-allied billionaires who lost the primary and decided to run as an independent.
One of the New York pols keeping silent was Chuck Schumer, Democrats’ pro-Israel Senate minority leader, who refused to say whom he was supporting in the race – and never ended up endorsing.
A year later, Democrats have secured a significant Senate majority, fueled in part by candidates across the country adopting the same messaging focus on “affordability” as Mamdani.
Who will that majority choose to lead them now? The senator who rallied behind a mayor who’s changed the American political landscape, who has led by example, traveling to El Salvador and Palestine to confront abuses by Trump and Israel? Or the party’s current Senate leader, who has again and again bailed out Republicans, sacrificed Democrats’ upper hand, done little to slow Trump’s immigration terror machine, and unconditionally supported Israel’s genocidal U.S. tax-funded violence?
No challenger to Schumer has emerged yet, even as his approval ratings continue to fall. Still, a number of Democrats have expressed interest in new leadership, or remain uncommitted to supporting Schumer, including: