In first 100 days, Schumer focuses on unity, new message

Max Schulte WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles Schumer said he was “totally down in the dumps.” Before Election Day, he fully expected to become the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and work with Hillary Clinton as president. When that didn’t happen, he moped around for three days. So did his family. But on the fourth day, he had “an epiphany, almost like a message from God.” And he told himself this: “With Trump as president and you as minority leader, your job is much more important.” Schumer, of New York, said he set out to address the “number one reason” Democrats lost the election. Middle and working class voters knew Democrats opposed Trump, but they didn’t know what the party would do for them, he said. He pulled together an expanded leadership team that included progressive icon Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and former presidential candidate, and Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, one of the Senate's most conservative Democrats.