Ryan Lizza has a very positive article on Schumer and the DSCC

The man orchestrating the Senate takeover is New York’s senior senator, Charles Schumer, who is the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has already managed the unlikely task of out-fund-raising his Republican counterparts.

Part of the reason Schumer took the job is that he was able to join Minority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate leadership team, which allows him to craft the party’s message with an eye toward the Senate races. He has embraced that job as if he’d spent his career representing Dubuque rather than Brooklyn. He is obsessed with the health of what he calls his “marginals,” red-state Democrats who live in fear of being too closely associated with, well, New York liberals like Schumer. He treats the marginals like fragile vases in constant danger of being knocked off their pedestals.

Schumer considers every Washington debate in terms of how it will affect the marginals. “There were some in our caucus that wanted to let the Patriot Act lapse,” he tells me. “I said that I think we got to change it, and I’ll work to change it, but to let it lapse would be a disaster, particularly for our Democrats in red states. You know, when I go to a drawing room in Manhattan and they say, ‘You got to appeal to our base!’ I say, ‘There is no base in North Dakota!’ ”

When Schumer took the helm of the DSCC last year, he became personally immersed in the weeds of the operation, hiring his own team, messing around in primaries, recruiting candidates, and personally lecturing them about how to run a campaign using what he calls the Schumer Method. That’s his secret recipe for his own New York victory, and he is now franchising it out. He instructs his candidates to very carefully define the prototypical swing voters in their home states—for him, it’s the imaginary Joe and Ilene O’Reilly from Massapequa—and then craft a campaign to meet their needs. To reach these local Joes and Ilenes regularly, he also coaches his candidates to get home and hit every media market in their state at least once a month. “The head of the DSCC used to be just a fund-raiser,” says Schumer’s communications director, Phil Singer. “He’s become more of a strategist and tactician.”

These red-state political moves aren’t just helping Democrats this cycle. They are serving as a road test for the potential platform of the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, whoever that turns out to be. Democratic victories in red states this year will be seized upon by party strategists as pointing the way forward for 2008. In that way, Schumer is helping the party define a kind of centrism that, if successful, could also help win the White House.

Some Democrats, however, have been flirting with a slightly altered version of the dream. Wouldn’t it be better, they wonder, if they came close to winning back the Senate this year, but accomplished the task only in 2008? After all, a slim Senate majority would make it difficult to govern, perhaps giving Bush the opportunity to turn the new Senate leadership into a useful foil, just as Bill Clinton did to Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, and thereby revive his presidency. Furthermore, this alternate dream scenario goes, in 2008, there are 21 Republicans up for reelection and only 12 Democrats. Wouldn’t that be the moment for Democrats to come sweeping back into power?

It would be unusual, but people who have watched Schumer over the past year and a half as he has become increasingly consumed by his DSCC work believe that he would be willing to stay in the job for another two years if he falls short this year. Aides close to him agree. Asked about that scenario, Schumer will only say, “Let’s see how I do this time.”

SCHUMER: ABANDONING FILIBUSTER UNDERMINES CHECKS AND BALANCE SYSTEM

Schumer says Founding Fathers never intended any automatic right to consent, majority or otherwise - there should be no rubber stamp for judicial nominees

http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/PR01674.html

The final decision will be made after the hearings, said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and one of the senators who will question Alito.

"If he's a mainstream conservative, if he doesn't use a court to impose his views on the American people, he's likely to get approved. Some people may vote against him because they don't want someone that conservative on the court," Schumer said. But at the same time, Schumer added, "If he is out of the mainstream and will use his tremendously powerful position as Supreme Court judge to impose his views on the American people, then there's a potential for a filibuster, and no one really knows that until the hearings."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506Q.shtml

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) is there anything that you know now that (OFF-MIKE)

SCHUMER: It's too early to tell.

SCHUMER: Nothing is on the table and nothing is off the table. Let's learn more about Judge Alito.

The one thing we do know is that the president was at a decisive point. He could have chosen a unifying nominee or he could have chosen somebody who would please the very extreme groups who didn't like Harriet Miers. And he chose the second course.

I don't think that's good for America. And, frankly, I don't think that's good for the president, whatever the outcome of the vote here.

QUESTION: Senator, can you compare the political climate if there were to be a filibuster, nuclear option, today versus June or July? Is the president's weakened state perhaps with some of the issues in the news these days something that gives you more hope if there were a filibuster (inaudible) nuclear option?

SCHUMER: Well, you know, again, I'm not going to get into speculating on into the future.

I think that the initial reaction of myself and most Democrats is the president missed a real opportunity here to unify the country. And the one thing we insist on is that we really get to know who Judge Alito is, that this not be rushed. And then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

As I said, nothing is on the table, nothing is off the table.

QUESTION: Senator, have you talked to any of our Democratic colleagues who signed on to the compromise that staved off the nuclear option last time and got...

SCHUMER: Well, I've talked to them a lot of times. Not this morning but, again, I think that was a very good thing because it staved off the nuclear option but it probably has 14 interpretations. And we'll have to see how each person decides to interpret it.

Thank you. Last question.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) you're kind of bracing and getting ready for the nuclear option, sir?

SCHUMER: No. I mean, I've been talking about judicial philosophy, judicial ideology for three years. I've said it's important for every judge, Democrat, Republican and on into the future.

You know, maybe we'll come to a day when neither the left or right will seek to use the judiciary to make law.

SCHUMER: We're not there now and that's why ideology is important. And the president himself has said ideology is part of his test. And so I think it's only fair for it to be for everybody else too.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

SCHUMER: It was much too early to tell. Obviously, there were troubles but -- I just remind you -- not a single Democrat said they were voting against her, not a single Democrat called for her withdrawal.

When Harriet Miers stepped down, it was because the hard right did not want her. And the president should not be governing simply by listening to a small group of people at one extreme.

Thank you.

END


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/31/AR2005103100707.html

BLITZER: Senator, on this whole notion of a filibuster, you know that you're very familiar with your colleagues, so-called "Gang of 14," seven Democrats, seven Republicans, the threat that the Senate Republican leader, the majority leader, Bill Frist, has made of triggering a so-called nuclear option. At this point, would you be inclined to push for the filibuster which would basically need 60 votes to overturn that filibuster?

SCHUMER: It's a good question, Wolf, but it's premature to answer it. I think I have to wait until the end of the hearings and then go back, read the transcripts, look at Judge Alito's history, talk to my colleagues and come to a conclusion. I would say it is certainly not off the table at this point. But I would also say that I don't think anyone on the committee, certainly myself and anyone I've talked to, has said we definitely should. It's a question of, first, hearing completely from Judge Alito and coming to a determination, and that is, he so far out of the mainstream that he doesn't belong on the court?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/11/schumer.access/?section=cnn_allpolitics