How Schumer’s messy style delivers for Dems: ‘I persist’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer effectively became the leader of the U.S. Senate on the morning of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. And it has been mess and tumult ever since, though less violent. Yet the New York Democrat has led the Senate in a surprisingly productive run, despite the longest evenly split 50-50 Senate in U.S. history. “I persist,” he told The Associated Press in an interview after passage of President Joe Biden’s big health care, climate and economic package. With a willingness to broker often politically unpleasant compromises he is leading the fragile Senate Democratic majority to other substantive, sizable accomplishments.