Monday, January 29, 2007

Schumer Itching for a Fight

This has not gotten much attention, but could wind up being very interesting in the long run:

The engineer of the Democrats' Senate takeover in November, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), said Monday that his party must break free from the demands of special-interest groups to succeed in 2008.

Schumer, in an interview with Fox News, said the Democrats won last year because of President Bush and the voters' rejection of his policies.

"There is no George Bush in '08," the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said.

He warned that last year's election success will have been an aberration "unless we stop listening to the special-interest groups - and those are on the left as well as the right."

Schumer isn't right about much, but he is spectacularly right about this. The Democratic takeover of Congress was not an endorsement of the Democratic agenda - largely because they didn't have much of an agenda. But if Congressional Democrats don't stick more or less to the center, and don't accomplish something in the next two years, they won't be in the majority very long.

Schumer is not particularly popular with the netroots, and I doubt they're going to love him for this either.

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