It took fewer than 15 minutes for Sen. Michael Bennet to get a question at his town hall in Greeley Tuesday night about whether Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer should be replaced.
“I would like to know if there’s any steps you are taking…to replace [Schumer] as minority leader,” the second questioner asked to loud applause. “Because everyone out here, everyone I know — moderates, hard core left people — they want someone who will fight and we need that now.”
The exchange crystalized the frustration Democratic voters have with their party’s inability to challenge the Trump Administration as it uses executive actions to reshape government, cut spending and lay off federal employees.
Last week, Schumer and nine other Senate Democrats helped Republicans overcome the filibuster in the Senate on a government funding bill they had derided in the days prior. Schumer’s argument was that a government shutdown would be much worse and Democrats had to focus on the mid-term elections.
Still, it was an about face that left many in the party wondering what the path forward would be as Trump continues his flood the zone strategy to remake the federal government and dole out retribution.
Bennet confirmed to the crowd of about 550 that he did in fact say at a Democratic meeting last week that leadership had, “no vision, no plan and no strategy,” but he didn’t call for Schumer to be replaced.
“What was very clear to me was the American people had absolutely no idea what we were fighting for,” Bennet said. “And that is a failure. and we've got to do a much better job the next time.”
Some Democrats worry there isn’t going to be a next time, that what Democrats will do is more of the same.
“We are literally seeing the Democratic Party and leadership just lay down and it's unacceptable,” said former state Rep. Joe Salazar. “You don't ever lay down. You don't ever give up your cards, especially on the fallacy that if we shut down the government that Trump's just gonna do, you know, whatever he wants to do. He's already doing it and, and, and that's why you have to stand firm and you have to stop him.”
Salazar, a former Democratic National Committee member for Colorado is in the camp that believes party leaders not only should have stood their ground in the funding fight, but should be doing more.
He’s not alone.
Outside Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s town hall last weekend , David Sandberg said he wanted Democrats to take a page from the Republican’s playbook. “When they were in the minority, they obstructed, they blocked, and were just general pains in the ass. We should politely return the favor.”
But Cheryl Erickson had a different take. “I want our representatives to speak out against everything that Trump is doing right now. I want it to be loud, I want it to be clear.”
Democratic Consultant Craig Hughes with Hilltop Public Solutions, understands Schumer’s decision to keep the government open.
“There's very real consequences to a government shutdown. The way it all played out was unfortunate and it definitely seemed to lack a real strategy,” said Hughes, who has been an advisor to Bennet.
Left-leaning political strategist Curtis Hubbard with OnSight Public Affairs said the challenge for Democrats is that at the federal level, they are outside of every level of power.
“The challenge I think is to be forward looking, to know that the next opportunity to regain power is in 2026 and to stay focused on that,” he added.
There are a lot of reasons why Democrats are in disarray right now, according to Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver.
There’s no clear leader of the party, and that can lead to uncertainty. Democratic messaging, especially around the government funding fight raised expectations for a fight, but in the end saw Democrats not use what little leverage they have in Congress.
But Masket pointed out there is also a generational divide.
“You have a more conventional, establishment side that is very determined to work through the established political norms of the system and to try and make government continue to work and to make themselves more competitive for the next election cycle,” Masket explained. “And you have another pretty substantial chunk of the party that is just saying the old rules no longer apply, we’re in a different world now and they’re demanding a much more combative stance.”
Put another way, those that came into office pre-Trump and those that came in post-Trump.
All but two members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation, Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Diana DeGette, were elected from 2018 onwards.
Sen. John Hickenlooper may have entered the Senate in 2020, but he was in political office before Trump, too.
“We have a rotten hand,” Hickenlooper said after the Senate passed the continuing resolution. He voted against moving the measure forward, but he understood why some in his caucus worried about what Trump would do during a shutdown.
“No one is more frustrated than I am….It is the most frustrating time in my political life,” he said. He held a telephone town hall right the day before the vote, where he too faced questions about why Democrats aren’t doing more. “At the end I think the point was we can do this, if we all work together and stop shooting each other in a circular firing squad but realize we’ve got to unite, no matter what decision someone doesn’t like. We got to beat these guys cause they’re going to ruin our country. We’ve got to get to work.”
For Hughes, that work means thinking about policies that can win elections.
“As tempting as it is to spend all of your time being against whatever Donald Trump does, we also have to put forward an agenda of what we are for,” he explained, such as fair economic policies.
And Hughes said Democrats are going to have to rally around “a certain set of principles, of protecting Medicare and Medicaid, of opposing tax cuts for the rich at the expense of working families.”
Hubbard said the Democrats have to use these months before the mid-term election get in full swing to make the case for the Democratic Party writ large, and that means not swinging too far to the left, but reconnecting with working class voters.
“The focus shouldn’t be on Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) and (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York) going to CD8,” Hubbard said of the state’s one swing seat. “It should be on getting people who can connect with working class voters in CD8 to show up and stand up and show that they have a better message and a better prescription for helping working families in Colorado.”
Salazar would like Democrats in Congress to cause a ruckus, but he’s not counting on it. Instead he has his sights set on the courts and on the states and the legislatures. “They need to be standing up, using the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution to assert states rights. I think that’s a good start and we’re not seeing that anywhere.”
One thing that was clear from the crowd at Bennet’s town hall was that the status quo and waiting until November 2026 is not enough.
When it was Lori Morris’s turn at the microphone, she told Bennet that these town halls are not enough.
“We need direction and we need leadership. Help us find that, give us something really specific,” she implored. “I get we need to turn out in droves, and I’m glad to see everybody here. But I don’t think this is enough. I think we need more.”
