In spite of a concerted grassroots effort against him, Chuck Schumer's chances of replacing
Harry Reid as the Senate's minority/majority leader don't yet seem reduced by his Iran stance.
MoveOn, CREDO, Daily Kos and other progressive organizations
have all made it a point to go after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his stance against the Iran nuclear agreement. By Monday, 23,000 MoveOn members had pledged to withhold $11 million from Schumer's re-election campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the campaign of any Democrat who opposes the agreement. The amount is the total that members self-reported they would otherwise contribute.
But while rank-and-file left liberals have excoriated Schumer for his stance in this matter, many of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (who supports the agreement), are not taking the same view. Sanders referred to the Iran decision as a the vote of "conscience." At least publicly, no senator seems to be taking advantage of the grassroots anger to launch a challenge to keep Schumer from taking over from Harry Reid as minority (or majority) leader in the Senate when the Nevada senator retires at the end of his term next year.
Schumer himself has made a point of saying that while he hopes other Democrats will follow his lead, he won't whip "nay" votes. Politico has reported that several publicly undecided Democratic senators said Schumer had called them specifically saying he was not on the phone to lobby them. For instance, there was Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who said Schumer would not suffer any backlash when Reid is replaced:
“We’ve all got a lot of admiration for Chuck’s skills,” Whitehouse said. “And we’re a caucus that has a lot of divergent views on some very important issues. That doesn’t bother other members of the caucus on other issues, so I don’t see this as a problem for Chuck on this one.” [...]
“I called Chuck Schumer and when I heard all the crap going on, and all the dialogue back-and-forth,” [West Virginia Sen. Joe] Manchin said during a Tuesday interview. “Chuck is a professional, and he understands that on these extremely personal, important decisions, each senator has to come to their own belief, their own inner peace if you will, about that decision.” [...]
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who has yet to announce a position, told Yahoo News that she had spoken with Schumer in recent days as well.
“He understands that this a tough call,” McCaskill said of Schumer. “He’s gonna respect everyone’s decision.”
The White House has been vigorously lobbying for favorable votes on the agreement, which would curtail Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States to stop what they say has been a drive by Tehran to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran's leaders say their nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes.
The administration's hope is that a resolution of disapproval under the Nuclear Agreement Review Act passed in the spring will not be able to generate 60 votes that are needed to overcome a liberal Democratic filibuster in favor of the Iran pact. But that's very iffy. The number that really matters is 34, which is how many votes are needed to uphold a presidential veto of a disapproval resolution. With the addition this week of Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota in favor of the agreement, the Senate tally of votes now stands at 18. An actual vote is still at least a month away.
Join us in urging senators to support the Iran agreement.