March 24, 2025, 5:27 p.m.
Most everyone has seen a child throwing a temper tantrum or having a meltdown—crying inconsolably, screaming, throwing and breaking things.
Right now, a fair proportion of Democrats are throwing a tantrum of their own, their ire focused on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s seen demonstrations outside the building where he lives in New York City as well as outside his Senate office in Washington.
Going after Schumer is a curious outlet for their discontent. From the calls for Schumer to step down from his leadership post, one might plausibly think he had become embroiled in a sex scandal or implicated in some kind of financial misdeed. In fact, Schumer simply voted a week ago in favor of a Republican-sponsored government spending measure that kept the government from shutting down.
Schumer has explained, maybe not well, that in the context of everything President Trump has done over the 63 days since taking office, shutting the government down might not be in the best interest of the country or the U.S. economy. A lot of Americans, both federal employees and regular citizens, risked being hurt in such a shutdown. A shutdown-related blow to the economy could tip the country into a recession.
This vote was hardly heresy. Deep down, it’s pretty clear that many Democrats still haven’t quite processed the outcome of the last election. Once-reliable voting blocs that had supported then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2020 bailed on then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, voting for Trump or not voting at all.
When Donald Trump left office in January 2021, most Americans were hardly inclined to put him back into the Oval Office. His job-approval rating while in office famously never reached even 50 percent. His final Gallup job approval rating in the January 2021 survey, just two weeks after the riots on Jan. 6, showed 34 percent approval (62 percent disapproved). Approaching it in a slightly different way, another January 2021 poll for CNN found that 55 percent of Americans saw his presidency as a failure, while just 41 percent saw it as successful.
The public assessment of Trump did rebound some, but only after Biden had the job for a while. Two-and-a-half years after Trump left office, a June 2023 Gallup Poll showed that looking back, 46 percent approved of the job Trump had done as president, while 54 percent disapproved. In the last two years of Trump’s first term, he never saw a Gallup approval of 46 percent or higher. Moreover, that approval rating was 3 points higher than was Biden’s own rating in the same poll.
The reality is that in early 2021, Trump was gone, the recession had ended seven months earlier, and Biden and Democrats were getting a fresh start. From the first Gallup Poll, conducted about 10 days after Biden took office through June of 2021, his approval ratings were in the 54 to 57 percent range—not fantastic, but about as good as it gets in this polarized age. But Biden’s drop to 42 percent in October, later falling as low as 36 percent. It would never recover to his previous highs. The drop corresponded with the rise of inflation that began within weeks of the first checks and bank transfers from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act. By the time Biden left office, the cost of living was 20 percent higher than when he was sworn in.
It wasn’t just the inflation rate, which did decline some later in the Biden presidency, but also the rise of interest rates to combat that inflation. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage climbed from 2.77 percent in January 2021 to 6.54 percent in November 2024. The interest rate that commercial banks charge for credit cards went from an average of 14.75 percent in January 2021 to 21.47 percent in November 2024. The rates for 48-month new-car loans: 5.21 percent to 8.12 percent.
The decline in Democratic support between 2020 and 2024 was greatest among those who were most vulnerable economically. Democrats had already lost most non-college white men, but then they began losing ground among non-college Black and Latino men as well. It is worth noting that the decline in the share of men awarded associate, four-year college, master's, and doctorate degrees has been in decline since 1970. Last year, 64.9 percent of all associate degrees, 58.2 percent of bachelor’s, 58.4 percent of master's, and 52.4 percent of doctorates were awarded to women.
If education is one of the most important factors in economic success, it only follows that men would be disproportionately hurt by rising inflation and interest rates compared to their better-educated female counterparts. For that matter, putting gender aside, there were drops among Black and Latino voters who identify themselves as either moderate or conservative.
The problem was never that Democrats aren’t liberal or progressive enough.
If these temperamental Democrats want to blame Schumer for the 2024 election, go ahead, but they should wonder why they are not attributing a share of the guilt to every other Democrat who was in Congress in 2021 and 2022 as well as in Biden’s administration.
It took a lot of effort to blow the situation that Democrats were handed in 2021, but they did a great job of it. If they wanted Trump to return to office, it’s hard to see what else Biden and Democrats could have done to bring him back.
Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal has said, “You can’t roll up your sleeves while you’re wringing your hands.” That would seem to be wise counsel for Democrats to consider. It isn’t any easier to roll up your sleeves if you are pointing fingers.
