A Necessary Revolt Against the Old Guard
Published at 17:16 on 6 November 2026
Senator-elects Andrews (SC), El-Sayed (MI), Flanagan (MN), Hamilton (KS), Jackson (ME), Pappas (NH), Stratton (IL), and Talarico (TX) have announced that they would prefer someone other than Schumer to be Senate majority leader. This is not left-versus-centre thing; the list includes both progressives and moderates. It is a newcomer versus entrenched old guard thing.
That old guard has arguably not done a very good job in recent years. Their party has lost two out of three times to Trump. Despite improving in the polls during the past year, the Democratic Party is still underwater by 8% in net approval.
Given the way the Democratic Party works, the revolt is unlikely to be immediately successful at its stated goal. However, the very fact it is happening is a good thing: it puts the old guard on notice that a growing number of people don’t think they are doing a very good job.
Hopefully, in the next cycle the purge of the out-of-touch and the incompetent can continue (i.e. primary the the bastards). I have written before that the Democratic Party is best understood as a willing co-participant in, and not an oppositional force to, the ongoing democratic decline in the USA. The stated preferences of these freshman Senators offer some hope for finally starting to do something about this.