The Senate’s top Democrat says he has taken a hard look at his party — and he sees where it messed up.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that Democrats have themselves to blame for last year’s crushing electoral defeats — and he promised a change is going to come this week.
“It is, in part, our fault,” the New York senator told ABC News’ “This Week.”
“When you lose an election with someone who has 40% popularity, you look in the mirror and say what did we do wrong?…We didn’t tell people what we stood for.”
Schumer’s self-reflection came a day before the Democratic Party will unveil its new economic platform, called “A Better Deal.”
It is expected to push the party toward the large-scale progressive proposals popularized by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who led a surging grassroots presidential campaign as a Democrat.
Schumer said the platform will, in part, target drug companies that jack up prices and major corporations that merge to cut competition. He also claimed there would be “a novel idea” that could help create “10 million jobs.”
He hinted that a single-payer health care system, one of Sanders’ key proposals, — is “on the table.”
Schumer said the new deal will “unify the Democratic Party” — at a time when it desperately needs to do so.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll last week showed only 37% of Americans think the Democratic Party today stands for something. Fifty-two percent said it only stands against President Trump.
Schumer’s scathing comments about his party are a notable departure from remarks by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who was widely expected to defeat Trump.
In her public talks since the election, Clinton has rarely owned up to mistakes from her campaign or party, and often blames her loss on last-minute interferences by Russian hackers and former FBI Director James Comey.
Besides Clinton’s defeat, Democrats also saw both houses of Congress seized by Republicans in November.
The party has struggled to bounce back this year. Democratic candidates lost hotly contested congressional races in Georgia and Montana that were both seen as tests for the GOP’s strength under Trump’s turbulent presidency.
On “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked Schumer why the party didn’t implement its new economic ambitions in the past eight years, when it had a President and more control in Congress.
“We all take blame, not any one person,” Schumer said.
“But now we have spent a lot of time working on this.”
