In an explosive rebuke that could signal a political fault line within the Democratic Party, Lisa McCormick unleashed a scorched-earth condemnation of Senator Cory Booker for backing Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii in the race to replace retiring Senator Dick Durbin as Senate Democratic Whip — a move the anti-establishment New Jersey progressive says cements the Democratic establishment’s “cowardly surrender” to Donald Trump’s authoritarian resurgence.
McCormick’s words were anything but measured. With a fury fueled by a deep mistrust of party elites and a disdain for what she views as collaborationist compromise, McCormick excoriated Schatz as an extension of what she called the “Schumer Doctrine” — a policy of appeasement and retreat that, in her view, has betrayed the very soul of the party.
“If Cory Booker is going to support Chuck Schumer and Brian Schatz after they betrayed America,” McCormick declared, “then the New Jersey Senator must be fired and replaced with a leader with the courage to stand up against Donald Trump’s tyranny.”
The fury stems from the recent Senate vote to pass a GOP-authored stopgap spending bill that averted a government shutdown — but at a high political and moral cost, according to McCormick and other progressives.
In a move that shocked even seasoned Capitol watchers, Senator Chuck Schumer reversed his earlier opposition and marshaled ten Democratic votes, including Schatz’s, to break a filibuster within his own caucus, thus allowing the bill to proceed.
The final passage — 54 to 46 — handed Donald Trump and House Republicans a victory just before the midnight funding deadline, and handed Democrats a new identity crisis.
Brian Schatz, attempting to justify his vote, framed it as a painful but necessary choice to prevent economic hardship, especially for federal workers in Hawaii. But McCormick wasn’t having it.
“At the exact moment the nation needed strength, as the people demanded resistance, Chuck Schumer cowered and capitulated,” said McCormick, accusing those senators of enabling tyranny and undermining the public’s already fragile trust in representative democracy. “Spineless Senate Democrats betrayed our trust, and Brian Schatz joined the ranks of the cowards.”
The allegation that there is an ‘old boys club’ has some substance. When she took on Bob Menendez in 2018, McCormick got more votes than any Democratic challenger to a statewide incumbent since Ted Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter. Menendez of New Jersey and Schumer of New York started in Washington together 32 years ago, after being elected to Congress from neighboring states in November 1992.
McCormick did not stop with Schumer or Schatz. She turned her sights on Booker, whose embrace of Schatz for the number-two Senate leadership role drew her ire.
“Booker’s support for this betrayal proves he is part of the problem,” McCormick charged, accusing him of putting allegiance to party bosses above principle at a moment when the stakes could not be higher. “The people of New Jersey deserve a Senator who will fight for democracy, not defend its gravediggers.”
This is no ordinary intraparty squabble.
With Trump having reclaimed the presidency — despite being a convicted felon facing multiple indictments — progressives like McCormick argue that the last thing Democrats can afford is another backslide into the weak-willed centrism that characterized the Obama-Biden era.
McCormick says that kind of timidity is what allowed Trump to claw his way back into power in the first place.
“The Democrats who enabled Trump’s crimes—by looking the other way, by refusing to disrupt, by clutching their pearls about decorum—are just as guilty,” McCormick said. “They feared a shutdown more than they feared a dictator. They feared bad headlines more than the collapse of our institutions.”
The establishment’s response has been muted, a deafening silence McCormick calls “proof of complicity.” Meanwhile, Schatz’s defenders have argued that his vote was made under duress — that a shutdown would’ve given Trump and Musk sweeping control over government operations, further marginalizing federal oversight and devastating working families. But McCormick scoffs at that logic.
“Resistance isn’t supposed to be comfortable,” McCormick said. “Real leadership means making tough calls. And yes, sometimes it means shutting down the government when that’s the only way to keep democracy alive.”
In a fiery screed posted online, McCormick accused Democratic senators of becoming “performance artists of protest,” who talk about resisting Trump while enabling his rise through cowardly maneuvers.
She pointed to the historical context: Eisenhower-era tax rates, the betrayal of Glass-Steagall under Clinton, and the party’s quiet adoption of Reaganomics.
“Do-nothing Democrats never tried to undo Reagan’s damage,” McCormick wrote. “They just learned how to raise money off it.”
McCormick is not simply sounding the alarm. She’s calling for a purge.
She wants Schumer out, Schatz off the leadership ladder, and Booker — if he won’t change course — politically exiled.
“This is not a polite call for reform,” said McCormick. “This is a demand for revolution inside the Democratic Party.”
The stakes are steep. The Democrats are not only facing a hostile executive branch; they are fighting an internal battle for their soul.
If Lisa McCormick’s incendiary rhetoric is any indication, the days of papering over these divisions with unity slogans may be numbered.
The fire is inside the house now, and it’s not going out quietly.