MSNBC host and onetime Democratic strategist Symone Sanders-Townsend suggested that she will change her political registration to independent, citing her outrage at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for helping ensure the passage of a six-month government funding bill drawn up by Republicans.
“There’s actually little that the senate minority leader can say and the ten Democrats that voted with the Republicans can say to appease somebody like me,” she said during Saturday’s taping of The Weekend. “I’m going to change my registration to independent.”
Nine Democrats including Schumer—plus one independent who caucuses with the party—voted Friday in favor of cloture, which limited debate on the bill, bringing it to a vote for final passage.
The funding bill passed in a 54-46 vote, with all but one Republican senator in support. Sen. Angus King (I-ME), the independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) also voted in favor of the bill.
According to a CNN report, Schumer caving to Republicans so enraged House Democrats that some encouraged Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to mount a primary challenge against him. (Ocasio-Cortez called Schumer’s vote “a tremendous mistake” though did not address a primary challenge.)
In the case of Sanders-Townsend, it prompted the MSNBC host and onetime senior advisor to former President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign to claim she was done with the party.
It is unclear whether Symone-Sanders was actually registered as a Democrat before Saturday—she previously referred to herself as “an independent” in a January 2024 broadcast.
During the segment Saturday, she produced copy of the funding bill and listed off page numbers she said contained cuts to government spending.
“There’s not another option for Senate or House Democrats to effectively push back,” she later added. “This was it. They blew it.”
Sanders-Townsend then seemed to predict that the Democratic Senate leader’s concession to Republicans will trigger a splintering within the party akin to the GOP’s own insurgent Tea Party movement in the late 2000s.
“The Democratic Tea Party was born the same day Chuck Schumer took to that podium to read that very well crafted statement that told us he folded like a paper napkin,” she said.
In addition to a chorus from the progressive wing of the party, Schumer’s vote was heavily criticized by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former House Speaker and centrist hardliner who has worked for years to sideline progressives like Ocasio-Cortez.
In a statement, Pelosi blasted the “false choice” between a government shutdown and backing the Republican bill, adding that supporting the GOP “instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
