Schumer: Working To Make The American Dream A Reality Once Again

Published Nov 10, 2026 6:00 am : Updated Nov 10, 2026 6:05 am

Chuck Schumer - Senate Portrait - MML

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke at the Center for American Progress on last week’s election results.

Schumer was Tuesday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:

“You know, when we’d just found out we won Tuesday night, I went on, I went before my caucus, whoever was there, and the people at the DSCC, and I quoted a great New Jersey guy, Frankie Valli: “Oh, what a night.” Well, now I want to talk about the future. So I want to spend today talking about how we build a durable, lasting Democratic majority.

Two years ago, a bookie would have given you better odds on the Knicks winning the championship than on Democrats taking back the Senate when we needed to win places like Iowa, and South Carolina, and Texas. But we were undeterred, and we succeeded.

Democrats not only held our ground; we won in places where just two years ago, a Democrat couldn’t get a meeting, let alone win statewide.

A win this big doesn’t happen by accident.

So today, I want to talk about three strategic decisions we made that contributed to our success this election:

First, focusing our message on the issues Americans care most about. Picking our legislative fights accordingly.

Second, recruiting great candidates with talent and desire, and each of them fitting their states.

And third, rejecting the false choice between populism and moderation.

Our goal now is to win back Americans’ trust and cement a durable Majority built not for one election, but to last. We need a majority with the size and staying power necessary to put the American dream back within reach of the American people, who are so struggling now.

To do that, we must take all three of those lessons to heart.

Before we unpack each of these three strategic choices, we need to recognize what this victory was and what it wasn’t.

I know this election was a referendum, of course, on Donald Trump, the worst president ever by a long shot in America. Millions of Americans voted for us out of frustration with Trump and the GOP – not out of love for the Democratic Party. Many Americans, from across political spectrum, are still skeptical of our party, and that’s okay. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to earn back their trust.

Donald Trump and the GOP received that opportunity in 2024, and they spent the past two years just squandering it.

Republicans’ blindness – and often outright dismissiveness – toward the American people’s anguish these past two years cost them this election. We made sure of it.

So, lesson one on messaging.

Our first strategic choice was this: focusing our message on the issues Americans care most about. Our caucus decided, at the very start of the last Congress, to hone our core message down to three concrete words: Costs. Chaos. Corruption.

The narrative was as straightforward as it was honest: Republicans and Donald Trump chose to pursue an agenda to increase Americans’ costs, to sow chaos in their communities, and steal their tax dollars through unprecedented corruption. We listened to the American people to identify these issues, and then we drove home the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on these issues every single day. And most importantly, we connected these three issues to one another.

We didn’t treat corruption as some abstract complaint about ethics in Washington. We told people the plain truth – that your costs are high in no small part because the powerful in this town are too busy helping themselves at your expense.

We didn’t let the chaos of Trump’s tariffs or his disastrous war in Iran turn into just another policy debate among the beltway blob. We highlighted how Trump’s chaos agenda was causing Americans pain at the grocery store and at he gas pump. These aren’t different stories – they’re the same story. The broader democratic ecosystem – of think tanks, advocacy organizations, civil society, creators, activists – were focused like a laser on the same theme. It was us working with them. We talked to them on a more than weekly basis and made sure we were all on the same page. Never in my career, never, have I seen such unity of purpose and message from such a disparate set of interest groups and allies. We were all united.

We also fought the right battles in Congress both to block the worst of the Trump agenda and, when we could not, to make clear who was to blame for the pain people were feeling.

I want to thank Hakeem Jeffries, our Ranking Members, and every member of the Senate Democratic Caucus for moving together as one. You’d be amazed at our meetings when we had this, the unity that was there. It is no secret that in a party like ours, so diverse, we don’t always agree – thank goodness. But despite our disagreements at times, we found a way to row in the same direction.

While we didn’t want a shutdown, when Republicans refused to fund Americans’ health care, we stood our ground to protect Americans’ health care. And make no mistake about it: the shutdown sharpened the American people’s view of the distinction between the parties on this crucial issue and it propelled us forward.

We used the power of the purse to protect Americans’ care and to force the administration to show some sanity.

And we made sure the American people understood exactly what was in the Republican agenda, so that by Election Day, their signature law was something they ran from, not something they ran on.

We did not do it by rolling out a thousand-page platform. That would have started a hundred arguments about the fine print – arguments perhaps worth having in a 2028 primary, not in a midterm.

Instead, we built menus: serious, detailed plans – you may remember this every day in the spring. We focused on the costs of the American people and what we were going to do about it – to lower costs, root out corruption, and rein in chaos. And we had plans to lower costs, root out corruption, to reign in the chaos. And we let our candidates reach for what fit their state and make it their own.

Cost, chaos, and corruption was the message of every one of our candidates, but they said it in different ways. What you say in Maine might not be the same as you say it in Kansas but it resonated from one end of the country to the other.

Now, lesson two is great candidates.

We also had one of the best classes of candidates I’ve seen, which brings me to the second lesson from this election: recruitment. We set out to recruit early, and to recruit everywhere — including in places where the smart money said a Democrat had no business even trying. Were there disagreements along the way? Of course there were. Healthy ones. But we ended up with something rare: a field of candidates who fit their states, who ran the gamut from proud progressives to life-long moderates, all united by one simple mission: make government work for the people, not the special interests.

They carried the same three words – costs, chaos, corruption – and they each sing in their own voice and in the right tune for their state, but the overall message resonated from one end of the country to the other.

Lesson three: populism vs. moderation is a false binary.

Now, for the most important lesson of this whole election and one I think we all need to internalize if we are going to truly build a durable majority: Populism and moderation are not mutually exclusive.

Just yesterday, on Morning Joe, I was sitting there waiting to go on and they had one progressive returning senator and one more moderate newly elected senator sitting next to each other. I don’t know how many of you saw it. When they talked about the issues and costs, what you heard was remarkably similar.

There’s nothing a Republican candidate loves to hear more than Democrats arguing over whether we should either fire up the base or win over voters in the middle.

Our candidates, every one of them each in his or her own way, proved that’s a false choice.

They energized the people who have been with us for forty years, and they won back people who voted for Donald Trump two years ago.

A durable majority – the one our party must build to get our country back on track – requires a coalition big enough to hold different voices.

Unity does not mean blind fealty to a party line; just look what that’s done to the GOP. Unity means linking arms with people you will not agree with on every issue so that you can make progress on the more important areas where you agree.

We are Democrats because we all believe that government ought to deliver for working families – not the special interests and not whoever happens to sit in the Oval Office.

Intra-party debate isn’t a sign of weakness – it’s how a healthy party learns and becomes more competitive. But let’s debate like people who intend to govern together, because that is exactly, exactly what we are going to do.

And starting in the 120th Congress, our majority will be measured against one test, and one test only: have we made your life better?

Everything we do maps on to three promises, the very same three we ran on, turning from a critique into a to-do list: lower your costs. Make government work for you. Clean up the corruption.

After this election and with a lame duck president that led the GOP to the greatest electoral disaster in modern times, one would think that Republicans would change their ways. A question is have Republicans learned their lesson? Because we will move forward with them or without them.

And about the president: look, it is true the presidential veto is in the Constitution.

Trump has the ability to block our efforts to lower costs for American families, root out corruption in Washington, end the chaos in our streets and overseas. But if he does that, I have no doubt the American people will rebuke him and his party, just like they did in this election.

Let me say that again: if Donald Trump does spend the next year vetoing commonsense legislation to lower costs and end corruption, this election – this absolute Republican catastrophe on election night 2026 – will look like a good day compared to what will come down on Republicans in the 2028 election.

This election made it clear that there are a lot of issues Republicans shouldn’t run away from: ending this disastrous war, stopping Trump’s costly tariffs, banning both members of Congress and the president from trading stocks, ensuring Americans’ electric bills won’t go up just cause a data center can pay less.

I’ll share more specifics in the coming weeks, but let me be clear to my Republican colleagues: you heard the same voters I did. Americans want us to act on these issues, and we are going to do it – with you or without you. If you block the solutions Americans want, they will know precisely who stood in the way.

Will everything pass? Will Trump sign all of it into law? Knowing Trump’s and Republicans intransigence, of course not.

But what I will promise Americans is this: the Democratic Party will fight to make your life more affordable, your government more competent, and your Capitol less corrupt – bill by bill, brick by brick, for as long as it takes for you to feel the difference.

Everything we pass this Congress is a down payment on our promise to voters to make a government that functions for them, that listens to them, that delivers for them.

The 120th Congress is just our majority’s opening act, which is why I will leave you with this.

Building a durable majority, a durable majority is not an election-night event. It is a mission that takes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Winning in states that have been red for a decade, or even decades, can’t be a one-time phenomenon. Some of the very same states where we won this election will offer new opportunities to expand our majority in 2028: Iowa, Kansas, the Carolinas, and more.

As we look to 2028 and beyond, we need to start identifying– now, in 2027 – to solidify our position in the states we won, build up our party infrastructure in those areas, and continue to expand the map into new states. Our newly elected senators, who all know their states so well, are going to play an important role in that effort.

Together, we need to show Americans in every corner of the country that Democrats aren’t all exactly the same – and that’s a strength.

Instead of letting Fox News define what being a Democrat is, our elected Democrats in these states will define what that means.

Texans will see what a real Texas Democrat is, Kansans will see what a real Kansas Democrat is, South Carolinians a real South Carolina Democrat – not a caricature as defined in a Fox News Studio in Manhattan. It’ll be a real breakthrough. That will help us win up and down the ballot in 2028.

Our work doesn’t stop when the polls close, and it doesn’t start when the next campaign begins. It is the work of showing up, delivering something real, and then showing up again – for the voter who has been with us for forty years, and for the one who gives us a second look for the very first time this year fall.

Because here’s the simple truth: if Democrats cannot win elections, if we cannot widen what it means to be a Democrat enough to build a majority that lasts, then everything we believe in stays exactly that: a belief. A life not made better. An America not made stronger.

Remember, an election is just a snapshot in time. What we do next is how we will be judged.”

The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.