On Saturday President Trump will rally a huge crowd in Pennsylvania to mark his 100th day in office. The last 14 percent or so of his first 100 days was spent dealing with the interminable analysis of said period.

Trump’s communicators have gamely issued a list of accomplishments to deal with the media’s obsession, even as the president himself has Tweeted (correctly) that judging a presidency after 100 days is “ridiculous.” The White House staff has no choice but to play the dumb game, forced to waste valuable man hours dealing with this coverage instead of running the government.

(Trump’s 100-day rally is delicious revenge on the press; it comes on the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, meaning some of the would-be revelers will have to work instead.)

But this back-and-forth over Trump’s 100 days made me wonder – why aren’t other government officials similarly judged? After all, we have a new Senate Democratic Leader in Chuck Schumer. What does his 100-day report card look like?

Come Saturday, Schumer will have actually been Democratic Leader for 117 days. He has much to show for it:

The confirmation of Neil Gorsuch will ripple throughout history. Schumer’s role in ensuring Neil Gorsuch as the replacement for the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court will be an enduring legacy. Schumer held most of his conference together in opposition to the nominee and delivered what proved to be a momentous legislative occurrence:

His decision to force a change to Senate rules was nothing less than inspired. By expanding on what The New York Times called a “precedent set by Democrats in 2013, when they had a Senate majority and used the nuclear option to eliminate some other types of filibusters,” Schumer has made it quite likely that President Trump’s next high court nominee will be even more conservative than Gorsuch, as that person, at the outset of the process, will need but a simple majority to earn confirmation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley told a newspaper he expects another Supreme Court retirement “this summer.”

History will long remember Schumer for reshaping the Supreme Court for decades to come.

Exposing hypocrisy in the legislative branch. Schumer is always playing chess while others are playing checkers. Take as a prime example his decision to allow the Democratic conference to grandstand over the nomination of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Schumer knew he could not prevent her confirmation to a Cabinet post that gets less attention than your average shoestring aglet. Nevertheless, he allowed Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, despite their previous support for school choice and vouchers, to hypocritically rail against DeVos on the Senate floor. Schumer’s work exposing legislative branch hypocrisy will hopefully dissuade future senators from embarrassing themselves the way Booker and Warren did.

It was a Machiavellian move, but one that was sorely needed. Bravo, Chuck.



Flipping the script on Democratic Party leadership. Schumer is no dummy when it comes to reading polls and he knows that being labeled a Democrat these days isn’t what it used to be. In fact, recent Gallup tracking of party identification found just 28 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, down 11 points since Barack Obama was elected president.

In a move that can only be described as savvy, Schumer, responding to this polling, has turned over representation of the party to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who by his own admission is not actually a Democrat. Sanders is traveling the country with national party chairman Tom Perez, holding rallies and doing media interviews in which they openly fight about what policies Democrats actually stand for. CNN charitably called the tour “bumpy.”

Schumer is nothing if not responsive. With 40 percent of registered voters in a recent Harvard-Harris poll saying the party has no leader, turning the thing over to people who aren’t actually Democrats is probably the right tactical move.

Revamped Democratic messaging machine. Following the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Democrats were shellacked in rural America, Schumer decided to rectify the problem by picking 72-year-old former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear to provide the Democratic response to President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress. Schumer, who definitely subscribes to the “all press is good press” theory of earned media, achieved the result he wanted.

"Not a lot of people of color sitting behind Steve Beshear," Tweeted Politico reporter John Bresnahan. “Not @KamalaHarris. Not @SenGillibrand. Not @JulianCastro. Not anyone who has a future in the actual #Dems party…amazing ineptitude…” Tweeted Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Philip Bailey, who was quoting MSNBC’s Steve Schmidt.

Not one to rest on his laurels, however, Schumer drew bipartisan attention for ordering members of his conference to pose for a picture next to a big sign that said: “Make American Sick Again.” Like Marty McFly’s ahead-of-its-time guitar solo in “Back to the Future,” Democrats ultimately weren’t quite ready for Schumer’s branding. As Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas said, “That sh-- doesn’t work.”

Even if Washington Democrats balked, their kids are going to love it someday.

Schumer has won awards for his new messaging tactics, twice earning the National Journal’s “Worst Day” trophy—once for crying, and once for holding a talkathon on the Senate floor opposite the college football national championship game. Ever the shrewd communicator, Schumer knows the best way to keep people from hating Democratic talking points is to use them when no one is watching.

While I am loath to admit it, Chuck Schumer has had a remarkable 117 days as the new Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate. Here’s to 11,117 more.