Schumer: Democrats could take Senate majority
Donald Trump’s approval rating is edging upward, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t sweating it — in fact, he sees an increasingly wide path to winning back power.
In an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday, the New York Democrat said he sees an upside for his vulnerable incumbents in campaigning as a check against the president. Democrats face a brutal map, defending 10 seats in states the president carried in 2016. But five months before the election, Schumer insisted he’s optimistic, touting internal Democratic polls that show that even Trump backers in six deep-red states prefer a Democrat who can counter the president.
“As Trump’s going up, our senators are going up in the polling,” Schumer said, crediting a crop of Democratic incumbents “who are identified with their own states, as opposed to identified with Washington and the national party.”
Though Democrats have a much better chance to win the House than the Senate, Schumer didn’t rule out a Democratic takeover of his chamber. On top of the strong position of many of his incumbents, he pointed to potential pickups in a handful of states.
“When you look race by race, we have a very good chance,” Schumer said. “We are much, much closer than people would ever think.”
Privately, Democrats believe only four of their incumbents are truly in danger despite the blood-red electoral map: Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Bill Nelson of Florida, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has omitted Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from his list of top GOP targets, as Republicans have lost out on some of their top recruits in Trump states.
Democrats’ midterm outlook isn’t entirely rosy, of course. They acknowledge that Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat is in jeopardy, even though Schumer touted a recent Democratic poll that shows Manchin (D-W.Va.) with a double-digit lead over Republican nominee Patrick Morrisey.
And even as Schumer described Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) as “the most vulnerable incumbent, bar none,” he still declined to “assume anything” as far as an easy victory for Heller’s Democratic challenger, Rep. Jacky Rosen.
Republicans dismissed Schumer’s optimism, pointing to Trump’s rising numbers as evidence of their own improving fortunes.
“Sen. Schumer is a master politician and spinmeister,” Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said in an interview.
Schumer stumbled big on his last public pre-election forecast: Ahead of Trump’s 2016 victory, he publicly predicted “a Democratic generation” in the making. He appears to have learned his lesson about measuring the drapes, insisting that he’s “not overconfident” about Democratic prospects this fall.
“I worry every day,” Schumer said. “But my point here is the conventional wisdom that this is a long shot is very wrong, OK?”
McConnell agreed in a recent interview with POLITICO that the Senate is up for grabs, noting the hot hand that Democrats appeared to have before Trump surged into the White House.
Senate Republicans “do have a good map,” McConnell said last month. “And sometimes that’s helpful. Although the Democrats had a good map in 2016.”
Five Senate Democratic incumbents are in particular trouble with voters, according to a Morning Consult midterm polling report released Wednesday. More than half of respondents in each of their states said Donnelly, Nelson, McCaskill, Heitkamp and Manchin did not deserve reelection.
On the campaign trail, Schumer isn’t as widely recognizable as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a favorite target for House GOP candidates. But Republican Senate hopefuls in red states are starting to yoke their Democratic foes to “Cryin’ Chuck,” as Trump dubs him on Twitter.
West Virginia GOP nominee Morrisey, currently the state’s attorney general, slammed Manchin this week by repeatedly linking him to Schumer.
Manchin “gets a pass from Chuck Schumer, and he’s on Chuck Schumer’s leadership team,” Morrisey said in an interview, adding that the Democrat “can be counted on as one of Chuck Schumer’s votes in the Senate as Chuck Schumer tries to become majority leader.”
Schumer shrugs off the attempts to make him an issue. Asked whether he would effectively be on the ballot this fall, he said, “I’m not that well known.” And besides, his members are “independent” — in other words, unencumbered to play ball with the White House when they see fit.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who heads Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, agreed that the party’s imperiled incumbents should be set as free as possible to make their own decisions when it comes to following or resisting Trump.
“These members’ goal is to be fighting for their constituents, and sometimes that means working with the president,” the Maryland Democrat said. “And sometimes that means opposing the president.”
Manchin, one of the party’s most endangered incumbents, is reading that mandate as broadly as possible, cozying up to Trump. At the same time, he said it’s conceivable Democrats will win the Senate by a narrow margin, even if he doesn’t plan to do anything differently should Schumer take the reins from McConnell.
“I think the Senate is going to be 52-48 no matter who wins. Either side. And I can work with that either way,” Manchin said in an interview this week. “That majority-minority thing is a bunch of baloney, as far as I’m concerned.”