Chuck Schumer isn’t taking Mitch McConnell’s bait

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More details are surfacing today about how intent Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats are about not giving Minority Leader any shared power in the Senate. Democrats are even going after the filibuster if necessary, just to make sure they can pass anything they want.

It’s now clear that Schumer never had any intention of giving McConnell even a sliver of shared power. So stop and ask yourself who leaked that nonsensical story about there being a “power sharing agreement” a few days ago?

Five bucks says Mitch McConnell probably leaked that nonsense. himself. He was hoping to bait you into attacking – and thus weakening – Schumer. Don’t let McConnell manipulate you like that. One of his favorite tactics is to try to convince us that the Democrats have caved when they haven’t, so we’ll turn against the Democrats, which takes away their leverage.

It’s always important to keep calling for the Democrats to be as aggressive as possible when it comes to Republican obstruction. But it’s just as important to make sure we have our story straight before flying off the handle. When you read a story about the Democrats being weak or caving, it’s usually false, and it was usually leaked by the Republicans. You have to look at whether there are holes to be poked in such stories, because there usually are.

Nothing scares the Republicans more than the notion of our side strongly supporting Democratic leaders, because when we do support our leaders, it maximizes their leverage. The Republicans will always try to bait us into mistakenly attacking the Democrats. But we’re going to be smarter than that. Chuck Schumer isn’t taking Mitch McConnell’s bait – and neither should we.