Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been in Congress since January 1981. He's survived Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, Joe "mashed tater-brain" Biden, Donald Trump once, and now Trump again.
After roughly 45 years in Washington, the Senate Democratic leader has finally encountered a political faction that seniority leaves thoroughly unimpressed.
Brooklyn Councilman Chi Ossé spent part of this week traveling around New York and sounding very much like someone considering a promotion. At a Democratic Socialists of America event in Kingston, Ossé declared that the era of "wait-your-turn politics is over," and added, "The time for us, the socialists, is right now."
Reports now say Ossé could challenge Schumer in 2028 if Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) launches a presidential campaign. Ossé hasn't formally announced a Senate run, so nobody needs to order the campaign balloons yet.
From the New York Post:
In May he notoriously said, “Woke 1 was crazyyyy.” It was an attempt to defend his 2021 remarks that “a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the council.”
Ocasio-Cortez repeated Ossé’s “woke 1 was crazy” comment last month before announcing on national television she was freezing her eggs. “During lockdown, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,” she said in an attempt to blame it all on pandemic stir-craze.
The presidential side of this is moving, too. DSA's National Political Committee approved a process this month allowing the organization to consider a 2028 presidential endorsement in March 2027. The internal fight has largely centered on whether the organization should position itself early behind AOC, although she hasn't declared a presidential campaign.
Nobody can accuse the DSA of hiding what it wants. Its own electoral guidance, updated Thursday, says the organization is working toward an "independent mass socialist party."
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The same document says its goal is to allow the working class to rule and "end capitalism." Candidates seeking national DSA backing are also expected to identify openly as socialists and treat themselves as socialist organizers first and legislators second.
And sitting near the center of this little family gathering is (Up)Chuck Schumer.
Schumer became the Senate Democratic leader in 2017 after decades of climbing through the party. He became majority leader in 2021, the first New Yorker ever to hold the job, and Democrats reelected him to their leadership in 2024.
New York voters gave him a fifth Senate term in 2022.
For most politicians, reaching the top of your party would be considered a career achievement. In Schumer's case, it may have put a large fluorescent sign over his head reading ESTABLISHMENT.
The emerging socialist wing has very difficult ideas about patience. Ossé is 28, AOC is 36, and Schumer will be 76 by Election Day 2028. The disagreement isn't merely generational, either. The DSA openly describes a political project that goes considerably beyond the Democratic coalition Schumer spent decades building and managing.
Schumer hasn't said he's retiring, Ossé hasn't declared against him, and AOC hasn't declared for president. Plenty can change before 2028; what's already visible, though, is a political movement increasingly comfortable treating one of the Democratic Party's most powerful figures as something to move past, rather than someone to follow.
After 45 years in Washington, Schumer may have discovered the one organization where seniority doesn't get you a better office.
It just makes you look older.