WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s calculated call to avoid a disruptive government shutdown alienates a political base enraged by President Donald Trump’s policies and frustrated at party elders’ cautious response.

The decision by the 74-year-old New Yorker to drop his threat to block a Republican spending bill touched off fury from party activists and drew rebukes from stalwarts like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Patty Murray, the chamber’s longest-serving Democrat. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New Yorker, refused to even entertain a question on Schumer’s political future.

There are no hints of a broader revolt that could lead to Schumer’s toppling, and several senators acknowledged that he took one for the team by avoiding a shutdown.

“He made the hard decision, and that’s what leaders do,” said John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who voted against dropping a procedural blockade of the spending bill.

But Schumer nonetheless emerges from the shutdown fight a leader of a party at odds with itself and increasingly unsure about its role in Trump’s Washington.

“Democrats did not have an ounce of input into writing this bill, and now House Republicans expect us to support it? That makes zero sense,” Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said on Friday. “You better believe I am not handing over my vote in exchange for nothing.”

Murray, Schumer’s most plausible successor in the unlikely event it comes to that, didn’t name him directly. Nor did Pelosi, who called the decision to fold “unacceptable.”

But they cut straight to Schumer’s central concern that a shutdown would give Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to slash the federal government. Instead, Murray and Pelosi warned, Democrats’ retreat gives them even broader latitude to fund programs as they see fit.

Murray said she’s never seen one party force the other to accept a completely partisan long-term funding bill, a not-so-subtle knock at Schumer’s negotiating tactics.

“If you refuse to put forward an offer that includes any Democratic input, you don’t get Democratic votes,” she said. “A shutdown is on Republicans.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, one of the party’s younger members, called for an after-action review of Schumer’s decision, which followed three days of contentious meetings within the caucus.

“Hopefully we learn from this,” Gallego said. “How do we avoid losing leverage in the future?”

Caution ahead

Schumer is by nature a cautious politician focused on long-term political advantage and wary of pursuing strategies without a clear endpoint, and his decision fits that mold.

At a similar point in Donald Trump’s first term, Schumer listened to an outcry from the party base demanding protections for immigrants brought here as children and led the party into a shutdown in a failed effort to protect them. He quickly folded a few days later.

And in 2014, Schumer said the party had erred by passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the legislation that became President Barack Obama’s legacy achievement. He instead suggested they should have focused on the economy.

Schumer told reporters late Thursday he worried a shutdown would be far worse than passing the Republican bill because Trump could eviscerate agencies at will and efforts to fight the president in court could be undermined.

He acknowledged Republicans could try and jam Democrats with another partisan bill in September, but expressed hope that Trump will be less popular by then and more Republicans will resist him.

Senators often want their leaders to do what Schumer did — absorb the attacks from party activists while ending a political crisis, even as they vote with the base. And political strategists like James Carville have pushed Democrats to embrace a roll-over-and-play-dead strategy, under the theory that the focus should be on damage Republicans are doing.

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the first Democrat to say he wouldn’t support a strategy that would shut down the government, said backers of a shutdown fight haven’t articulated a way out.

“The big mouths in the House are calling for a shutdown. Tell me how we get out of that?” he said. “We would have to grovel to Republicans who control the only way to get out of a shutdown.”

Fetterman voted with Schumer to end the procedural blockade of the spending bill, helping provide Republicans with the 60 votes needed to overcome the obstacle. Still, like the Democratic leader, the Pennsylvania senator ultimately voted against passing the measure, when their votes weren’t needed to prevail.

That caution doesn’t play well with restive progressives. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York teed off on Schumer’s capitulation online and to reporters. And there was a broader worry about a loss of leverage to the GOP.

“Bailing them out without extracting anything in return is political malpractice,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York.

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(With assistance from Alicia Diaz and Billy House.)

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