Van Hollen Introduces Choice Into Senate Leadership

Sen. Chris Van Hollen announced Thursday that he would challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer for Democratic leader after the party recaptured the Senate, recklessly introducing the concept of choice into a chamber built to protect its members from sudden exposure to democracy. Schumer maintained that he already had the votes, the furniture and the accumulated institutional inertia necessary to make counting unnecessary. The Maryland senator’s campaign alarmed longtime Senate observers, who warned that two Democrats seeking the same job could force lawmakers to compare records, consider competing arguments and make a decision without first being told it was unanimous.

Schumer defended the Senate’s traditional understanding of representative government, under which voters elect senators and senators then preserve whichever leader has occupied an office long enough to develop adverse possession. “Democracy means Americans choose their representatives, and those representatives quietly approve the person whose name is already printed on the leadership stationery,” Schumer said, accurately summarizing a process last reviewed when fax machines were considered disruptive technology. Van Hollen, by contrast, argued that Democrats should debate the party’s direction, a provocative proposal that could destabilize Washington’s preferred model of succession: papal conclave rules administered by consultants, donors and people who describe losing slowly as strategic patience.

The contest began days after voters handed Democrats control of the Senate, apparently believing political power was intended for use rather than preservation in a climate-controlled display case. Several senators were reportedly seen asking aides what Van Hollen believed, marking a serious breach of the custom requiring leadership elections to concern seniority, donor comfort and whether everyone can leave before dinner. Officials cautioned that a contested race could spread beyond the leader’s office, forcing committee chairs to develop agendas, party leaders to attract followers and incumbents to explain why they deserve jobs they have held since the invention of voicemail. Senate leaders responded by drafting an emergency bipartisan resolution affirming that ambition remains a cherished American virtue when exercised exclusively by the person already in charge.

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