Surprise...
Chuck Schumer favors Bibi Netanyahu and Republicans over the President on Iran.
With the likes of (NY's highly Jewish 6th Congressional District Dem Representative) Grace Meng softening his terrain with her earlier pronouncement against the deal, Schumer, at first... (ahem) 'deliberated.'
Some deliberation! When has Schumer not put Israel before country? Congress hasn't first held hearings, yet Israel's heavy-handed lobbying already struck Congressional gold with early panderers Schumer, Meng, et al.
Schumer, Meng - in all likelihood, NJ's Bob Menendez - and their ilk give every appearance of pandering to their Jewish constituents, such pandering based in no small part on the flawed calculation that all Jewish Americans support Israel in everything it does: the so-called 'Israel, right-or-wrong' block.
Repeatedly, the Obama administration has voiced its dispute with Israel's continued appropriation of Palestinian territory for building new settlements, to no avail. Yet the Obama administration - alone among nations - stands with Israel at the United Nations in denying Palestinians nationhood status... the likely reason being the charges of war crimes Israel will face once Palestinian nationhood is granted, when legal recourse will be theirs to pursue. U.S. standing in the world remains damaged immeasurably staying this course.
Israel has become an apartheid society. But the continuing carte blanche theft of Palestinian land for settlement development equates to the slow-motion, state-sanctioned extermination of a people, genocide. Weigh in, Shumer? Meng?
It's noteworthy that NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand - with politically as much at stake as Schumer - stands with Obama.
Schumer threw the President, Democrats - America - under the proverbial bus. But in the most curious way. Schumer (who, moth-like, gravitates to any/every camera in sight) released his disapproval of the Iran deal in the middle of the Republican debate - his version of a Friday night news dump. No cameras. No microphones. No guts.
Simply put - by this single act of his - Chuck Schumer disqualified himself for Senate leadership. His split from President, Party and any appearance of honest governance - favoring patronage over national interest so shamelessly - marks him as far too untrustworthy to represent the party's interests over his own. He and Meng should be removed from every Congressional committee where their benefactors' interests hang in the balance.
Schumer operates as if he's in the Knesset, not the Senate. The optics of a Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are awful: they scream, 'old-crony-business-as-usual-entitlement (not unlike other prominent Dems).'
We can do better. Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren come to mind.