It’s all over the wires: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) likely won’t seek reelection in 2028.
According to an X teaser from Bad Hombre, Schumer “has privately told several close advisers, including his chief of staff Mike Lynch, that he won’t seek re-election,” in no small part because of recent polls showing him “trailing multiple hypothetical primary challengers.”
It isn’t just Schumer’s staff apparently leaking word that the long-serving pol’s days are numbered. Puck News — again with just a teaser at press time — claims that his fellow Democrat senators don’t expect him to run again in ’28.
So it’s a pretty safe bet that, on the off chance Schumer doesn’t actually intend to retire at the end of his term, party insiders want to escort him out like Tessio in the last act of The Godfather.
Yes, there’s a Godfather reference for everything. Yes, I’ll keep using them.
How’d he get here?
While Mr. or Ms. Hypothetical tends to poll better than actual candidates do, Schumer — never the most skilled political operator — has spent much of his time as minority leader trapped between the proverbial rock and the actual hard place.
The rock is his party’s increasingly radical left wing, represented locally by one of those not-so-hypothetical primary challengers, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (also D, also N.Y.). The hard place is actually a couple of things. The most difficult is that the further left the Democrats get pulled, the less popular they become outside of hardcore blue enclaves. The other is that, as his party’s leader in the Senate, Schumer has to push those poisonous positions, regardless.
Witness the six-week Schumer Shutdown, just ended on Wednesday with President Donald Trump’s triumphant signature — and the hard left’s hysterical reaction.
Here’s one of the nicer takes, courtesy of lefty David Austin Walsh.
What even is the point of Chuck Schumer anymore? The Democratic rank-and-file are pro-Palestine. The New York Democratic establishment has imploded. Even Third Way is signaling they’re done with his Senate leadership.
— David Austin Walsh (@davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 10:52 AM
The Dem response to Schumer caving on the shutdown is just brutal.
Over on Bluesky Democrats are savagely attacking Chuck Schumer calling him a Trump bootlick, a traitor to his party, a failure at his job yet again. “Chuck Schumer is nothing more than a human strongly worded letter, and he must go.” Shuck Chuck. Schumer is complicit. These are… pic.twitter.com/oVQQZGK27k
— PoliticalFleaBites (@PNT1092X) November 11, 2025
Things get much worse from there. Stephen “Redsteeze” Miller posted that “Bluesky is currently posting guillotine memes about Chuck Schumer,” but I just didn’t have the stomach to go looking for those.
The thing is, this is nothing new. While David Axelrod predicted earlier this week that Schumer would lose his leadership position by 2027, calls for his resignation go back at least to last March: “Danielle Vinson, a professor of politics and international affairs at Furman University in South Carolina, told Newsweek that Schumer may be looking for a ‘graceful exit’ before his current term ends in January 2029, but is unlikely to be “tossed out” as Senate leader.”
Yeah, well — if he wanted to go gracefully, he should have done it back then. As of this week, that ship has flown the station.
As my Hot Air colleague John Sexton put it on Monday, “I almost feel sorry for Sen. Chuck Schumer. His life has turned into a Greek tragedy where, no matter what he does, he winds up at the same predestined, unpleasant end.”
For the record, I do not feel sorry for Schumer. He’s the very definition of a political hack, whose only notable skill, even after decades in Washington, is his clingy ability to “climb the greasy pole,” as the Brits say. Schumer wanted this job, Schumer got this job, and now he’s going to lose this job because he’s just no damn good at it.
My parting message is this, for whatever it’s worth: “So long, Chucky. Can you say Senator Squeaky?”
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