Chuck Doesn’t Get It: Dems Need Friends

LIBERAL Democrats probably wouldn’t be able to speak a word if they weren’t able to insult and condescend to the very people they need. It’s as if they read a book titled “How To Lose Friends and Influence Nobody.” After several Senate Republicans voted Thursday to join Democrats in temporarily raising the federal debt ceiling, averting a financial crisis, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor to insult the opposition that had just saved him.

“Senate Republicans finally realized that their obstruction was not going to work,” Schumer huffed. He referenced “the cliff ’s edge that Republicans tried to push us over” and harangued Republicans for having “played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinksmanship did not work.”

Set aside that Schumer was engaging in revisionist history — Republicans were never needed for

Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own. Look at how Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W. Va.) recoiled at Schumer’s tacky tirade.

Manchin was seen behind Schumer shaking his head and then burying his face in his hands, plainly embarrassed by his leader.

He eventually got up from his seat to leave the chamber before Schumer even finished.

Afterward, Manchin said of

Schumer’s comments, “I didn’t think it was appropriate at this time,” and “I’m sure Chuck’s frustration was built up, but that was not a way to take it out. We just disagree, and I would have done it differently.”

Yes. So would anyone else who’s not in a position to be slinging contempt at the very people needed to

Calling them “just two senators” is like calling quarterback Tom Brady and his best receiver “just two players.”

get things done. That would be every single Democrat in Congress.

And yet they act like they need no one. True, Democrats own the House, the Senate and the White House. But that means nothing when you consider that President Joe Biden was elected claiming to be a consensus builder, that several House Dems are in jeopardy come 2022 and that Democrats control both houses with razor-thin majorities, with the Senate hanging on one tie-breaking vote.

But this is how Democrats operate, taking every cheap shot to score partisan points and sow division, even after their president ran a campaign on “restoring the soul of America.”

One might assume “restoring the soul of America” means approaching the opposition with a gentler touch. Guess not. Biden himself now says things like, “My Republican friends need to stop playing Russian roulette with the US economy. If they don’t want to do the job, just get out of the way.”

By “restoring the soul,” Biden apparently meant unilaterally pushing an extremist agenda and invoking gun-violence imagery when anyone stands in his way.

Biden and progressive Democrats in Congress are trying to pass trillions of dollars in new welfare spending (sometimes referred to as “infrastructure”) that requires every one of the party’s senators to sign off, including Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of

Arizona, who represent rightleaning states.

Yet you’d never know it listening to Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington. Representing the party’s most left-wing caucus, she used an appearance Thursday on CBS to talk down to Manchin and Sinema, railing: “I would like them to recognize that they’re just two senators, and 96 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate and the president agree.”

Sorry, Congresswoman, but calling them “just two senators” is like calling quarterback Tom Brady and his best receiver “just two players.” The two are dominating the game right now, thanks to Dems’ slim majority.

Sen. Bernie Sanders similarly tweeted, “2 senators cannot be allowed to defeat what 48 senators and 210 House members want.” His math was off — it’s actually 52 senators — but it was just as condescending as ever.

As gross as Washington is, compromise and civility aren’t supposed to be off-limits. Rather, they’re indispensable, especially when your party is hanging on by a thread and likely — as indicated by virtually every poll — to be wiped out in a year.

But liberal Democrats don’t understand that. Chuck Schumer proved it. Good for Manchin for calling him on it.

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