In the latest episode of the Senate Minority Leader embarrassing himself, Chuck Schumer reportedly called President Donald Trump and asked him to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court “as a way to unify the country.” Schumer, seemingly waking from a decades-long slumber to pontificate on 2018 politics, warned that there would be “cataclysmic” consequences of another arch conservative hostile to the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade and that it would tear the country apart—an almost hilariously senseless non-appeal to Trump’s most basic political instincts.

The Twitter account for the Senate Committee of Mitch McConnell—who long ago napalmed any appearance of unity by blocking President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland—responded to Schumer’s appeal with a GIF of Michael Jordan laughing. Meanwhile, Trump nominated hardcore conservative federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, vetted by Leonard Leo of the right-wing law activist group, the Federalist Society.

In the face of naked Republican obstructionism and right-wing radicalism, Schumer has cluelessly leveraged his leadership position to new heights of fecklessness. In May, he tried to pin high gas prices on Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal, setting up a photo op in front of a gas station before Memorial Day weekend, that roused exactly zero voters. In late June, he took to the Senate floor to admonish fellow Democrat and California Rep. Maxine Waters as “not American” after she made a speech telling an enthusiastic crowd to “push back on” the Trump administration for its brutish policy of separating migrant children from parents at the border. “We all have to remember to treat our fellow Americans with the kind of civility and respect we expect afforded to us,” he lectured.

Despite Schumer’s 40+ years in public service, he seems fundamentally impaired in grasping the current political climate and the decades-long Republican project of stomping on Democrat pleas for unity. He certainly has not been alone. In 2000, when the Supreme Court stole the presidential election from Al Gore, Gore threw up his hands, preached "unity" and "acceptance" and made a call "to heal the divisions." And after graciousness in defeat, was it returned by Bush? Of course not. Post 9/11 he told anti-war dissenters, "baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," leading to the shunning of war critics and accusations of being unpatriotic. Gore should have known better. He was there during President Bill Clinton's triangulation years when Newt Gingrich put out his famous 133-word memo on messaging in 1990, detailing the words Republicans should use to define Democrats: sick, traitor, corrupt, and liberal, among them. It came to define the Republican playbook: character assassination and obstructionism, whatever the issue. Democrats have responded by absorbing and capitulating to Republicans’ twisted version of asymmetrical reality—one that demanded their own civility in the face of ever-mounting viciousness—backing themselves into an ever-smaller corner until those like Schumer have lowered themselves into a cowering crouch, whispering unity and civility to anyone who will listen. Old Democrats have been bringing a tea cup to a bar brawl because that bar was once a nice, civilized cafe, a real community center, 30 years ago—and they're scolding other Democrats for not holding their pinky fingers up when a bar stool flies across the joint.

When Obama was elected in 2008, he accepted with a speech emphasizing “the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.” The Republican response? “We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time,” future Vice President Mike Pence said. “We’re going to go through him like crap through a goose!” In pursuing a healthcare fix, Obama proffered a plan he thought might appeal to Republicans, and then nominated a moderate, Merrick Garland, to the Supreme Court. Instead of accepting an olive branch, Republicans promptly lit it on fire, adopting a stance against anything Obama was for, unity and country be damned, and earning them the moniker of “The Party of No.” Increasingly radical, Republicans across the political establishment were so unified in absolute opposition that they cast George W. Bush’s old speechwriter David Frum into the wilderness for arguing that they work with Obama on healthcare, which got him fired from conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. Along the way, they won back the House, the Senate, and the White House, along with two Supreme Court appointments and unleashed a frenzied tribal base whipped up by the newer iterations of Gingrich’s stylings in untethered character assassination—all on the message of enmity over unity and cynicism over hope.