Should Chuck Schumer be the Senate Majority Leader?

It comes down to perception versus reality, something we’re very familiar with in the music business, where image is everything.

Doesn’t matter how good your record is if you’ve committed sexual faux pas. Or aligned with the wrong people. Or said something dumb. Conversely, there are always a number of stars with minimal talent being propped up as the real thing and getting away with it. Because the public wants to believe, people need to believe, it’s all about their perception, not reality.

Look at ticket fees. The truth is they are part of concert costs. The acts take almost all of the face value of the ducat. So, in order for the others providing services to make money, from the promoter to the venue to the ticketing company itself, there must be fees. But acts don’t want the general public to know this truth. Instead, they put all the blame on Ticketmaster, et al. You’d think Ticketmaster would have its knickers in a twist, blow back against this falsehood. But they’re in on the game. They are paid to take the heat. And without the acts, there’s no business to begin with.

You just cannot convince the public there’s anything good about Ticketmaster, and you can throw in Live Nation while you’re at it, even though it’s the nature of the game for all ticketing companies and promoters, and yes, the ticket prices are set by the acts themselves to boot! When buyers see high prices they blame the ticketing company and the promoter, who are just doing what the act tells them to. The public just does not want to believe the acts are greedy and duplicitous, so this is the way the business works.

And politics is a business too. Not only with elected officials and their penumbra, office majordomos down to interns, but the commentariat too. Only unlike in the music business, everybody in D.C. thinks their sh*t doesn’t stink. They look down on the public in the movie business, but not in the music world, which is inherently down and dirty.

So for two weeks there’s been this debate over whether Schumer should be the Democratic leader. And what are we getting? A scoreboard, a weighing of the facts, a complete misreading of the situation.

Yes, the typical faces, who are friends with these officials, veritable insiders, keep telling us to look at what Schumer has actually accomplished. How some of his handpicked candidates, like Sherrod Brown and Roy Cooper, got elected. They’re giving Chuck all these points for pulling off a Democratic coup. We can debate to what degree Chuck deserves the accolades, but that’s not the point.

And then there’s an analysis of the newcomers. We keep on hearing that we can’t let the Democratic Senate be pulled too far left. Yes, a few woke outliers got elected, but a lot of centrists too. Chuck is a centrist, he fits perfectly!

And he’s got experience.

For days, there’s been this constant analysis, a toting up of the data, completely missing the point.

Public perception is Schumer is a loser who refused to stand up to Trump, and therefore he has to go!

Don’t tell me that the Democrats had their hands tied behind their backs, that they had no real power. Chuck kept appearing with his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose telling us sans emotion that he too was not happy with what Trump was doing, but he had no power, WHAT WAS HE GOING TO DO?

He’s as bad as the Republican me-too officials who gave Trump a pass by refusing to stand up to him, rubber-stamping everything he did, who got their asses kicked in this election. The public wanted officials to stand up to the bully. To stop the madness. Even if it meant going down in the fight.

But everybody was afraid of not playing ball, and losing their seat, which happened anyway. You see it’s a long game, and you’ve got to play for it. Which also means you have to pivot along the way, something that’s anathema in politics.

We wanted Schumer to rant and rave, to lose his cool, he was our voice, our only option, AND HE WASN’T STANDING UP FOR US!

We didn’t expect change, but we expected someone to say what we were feeling, that what was going on was OUTRAGEOUS! Instead, we were left fully outside. No one predicted the magnitude of this blue wave. The media was clueless, even the pollsters didn’t assess the anger. And now you want us to employ the usual suspect?

NO WAY!

We need someone fresh. Starting from zero. Who can chart a new path. Who is not hobbled by legacy actions. Who can fight from a place of strength. And that’s what we want, a fighter. The battle is only beginning. Trump has fired the latest shots, by hiring Miller and threatening to sue if investigations happen. We need someone who can push back, challenge him, someone to lead the charge. Where has Chuck Schumer been for the last two weeks? On an insider victory lap. Completely oblivious to our anger and pain. If he were a real leader, he would be barnstorming, getting people fired up, ready to fight. If Chuck speaks at all it’s from a position of defense, when we want OFFENSE!

The numbers say that Schumer will get the gig. He only needs 50% of Democrats, and they say he’s got the votes in the bag.

Here we have Biden redux. The truth is staring us in the face and everybody’s afraid to break protocol, stand up for the truth. In the process losing the trust and faith of the public.

Schumer has got to go, perception is he’s weak, a loser, a veritable milquetoast. Someone who doesn’t really know how to lead, who doesn’t know that fighting is about the opponent, not your own troops. If only Schumer was out there battling Trump 24/7 the past two years we’d feel differently. Instead he was huddling with the loser Democrats, trying to shield themselves from the fallout. How are you supposed to win with this strategy?

You can’t.

Seemingly everybody in the U.S. knows this, how come the bloviators in the media do not?