Schumer's base gets arrested demanding he fight back; the next day, Democrats hand him a fight back.

…(cont) November 8th: Hakeem Jeffries says his party will refuse to work with the White House chief of staff.

November 9th: Chris Van Hollen tells people he's thinking about running against Schumer; a survey of more than four thousand progressive organizers that same day finds seventy-two percent of them want Schumer and Jeffries both replaced.

November 12th: fifty-four people — Sunrise Movement's own count — sit down inside Schumer's office and get arrested asking him to fight harder; that same day, Jeffries is asked directly whether he opposes deeper U.S.-Israeli military integration, and doesn't answer the question.

November 13th: Van Hollen announces he is running against Schumer for majority leader.

That's the whole list, in the order it happened. I'm not telling you what it means. I think a man's entitled to see the dates lined up before anybody starts explaining them to him.

Here's what I keep thinking about instead, and it isn't political, it's just mechanical. I've got a car in the garage that's done the same thing for about two years — starts fine, runs fine for six blocks, then hesitates, like it's deciding something. My brother-in-law looked at it twice. Both times he said it was the fan belt. Twice I bought a fan belt. The second time, standing in the driveway, he told me if I replace that belt again without pulling the engine apart to find what's loose back there, I'll be buying a third one by spring. Is a part you keep replacing the same small problem, or is it a big problem that's learned to wear the small part's face? I don't know enough about engines to answer that. I know enough about the last two months to ask it.

Because here's the thing about the fifty-four people in that office on the 12th. They weren't asking for a new senator. They were asking the one they had to fight harder — that's the request, in their own words, read back off whatever sign they were carrying. And the answer they got, one day later, wasn't a belt. It was a man with a Senate seat of his own, announcing he'd rather have the whole job.

Is one day enough time for a senator to decide a colleague needs replacing? Or is it just enough time for a decision already made back around the 9th, or the 6th, to get a date stamped on it?

And the colleagues who said on November 6th they didn't want him — were they talking about the same thing the fifty-four people in his office were talking about on the 12th? Or two different problems that happen to be pointing at the same man?

Before I let you go — one more thing, and I almost didn't write it down, so bear with me while I find the page. The company that hired Schumer's daughter to work Congress did that on September 7th. The sit-in was November 12th. The daughter came first, by more than two months.

So which one explains the other? The people who got arrested asking him to fight, or the arrangement that was already in place two months before anyone needed to ask?

I wrote it down. I just want to make sure I wrote it down right.