More than the inability to influence Iraq policy or the President’s tax cuts, Chuck Schumer says that the single greatest failure of the Democrats as an opposition party was allowing Samuel Alito to join the Supreme Court. “Judges are the most important,” said Mr. Schumer, who orchestrated the implausible Democratic takeover of the Senate last week. “One more justice would have made it a 5-4 conservative, hard-right majority for a long time. That won’t happen.”From now on, all the President’s judicial appointments will need to meet the requirements of Mr. Schumer, the Park Slope power broker who has happily accepted the mantle of chief architect for the Democrats’ effort to build a majority for the 2008 elections and beyond.
The Senator also intends, in the coming months, to rework the federal governmentÂ’s funding priorities in New YorkÂ’s favor, to steer the Democrats toward a radically new position on Iraq and, while heÂ’s at it, to cement his position as the unofficially declared tactical guru for the national party.
And in case anyone’s wondering, yes, Mr. Schumer is entirely comfortable with this sort of power. With his Gold Toe–stockinged feet dangling, the 55-year-old slumped in his armchair on Friday morning as if it were a leather throne. On his apartment’s front door, a neighbor taped up a front page of The New York Times heralding the Democrats’ success and scrawled “Congratulations Schumers!” across the cover.
The candidates that Mr. Schumer recruited, groomed and bankrolled had won a comprehensive victory over the incumbent Republicans, giving the Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate to complement a rout in the House. Since the election, Mr. Schumer has been awash in attention from the media, his Democratic colleagues and even from the President, who called, quite sportingly, soon after the results were finalized.