Schumer in trouble with his Wall Street base

NY Times:

The usually unavoidable-for-comment, if-it’s-Sunday-here-is-my-press-release senior senator from New York is being a little tetchy about going on the record.

Senator Charles E. Schumer has had a not-so-hot run recently. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg accused him of failing to deliver enough federal health care dollars for New York, and the city’s titans of finance at a recent closed-door meeting accused him of being insufficiently pro-Wall Street; one indignant fellow stood up and demanded his donation back.

Some Democrats whisper that he plays the too-aggressive kingmaker, shoving aside challengers to Kirsten E. Gillibrand, the appointed junior senator. And a recent Marist College poll suggested that Mr. Schumer’s favorability ratings had leaked helium, falling to 47 percent.

Is this fatal to the senator as he seeks his third term? That seems highly, deeply, profoundly unlikely, even according to those same pollsters and to senior state Republicans, who prefer to place Ms. Gillibrand in their cross hairs for the fall of 2010. But a harsh wind is howling for incumbents, and Mr. Schumer, who has been running for office since just about the day he left Harvard, does not like talk of any Democrat’s political mortality, particularly his own.

So he carefully measures out his verbs and nouns for a reporter, trying not to say what he knows: It’s been a rough year.

...

Wall Street’s current disaffection is intriguing, as Mr. Schumer served for 30 years as Horatio at the bridge, guarding against too many incursions against the financial industry. He artfully sidetracked an effort to tax hedge funds and pushed for repeal of legislation that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in risky investments like trading stocks or mortgage-backed securities. And he helped craft a bank-friendly bailout. In return, he has taken in more money from the securities and finance industry over the course of his career than any Democrat other than Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Of late, Mr. Schumer has put a little flannel in his pinstripe love. He favors an Obama administration proposal to tax large banks. He has spoken out about “outrageous” bank overdraft policies.

So the prevailing mood on Wall Street is of wounded innocence: Et tu, Chuck? The Partnership for New York City, a plutocratic chamber of commerce, recently met with the senior senator. “This disappointment was very high; he’s walked away from our industry and that’s unconscionable,” said a member, who nonetheless did not feel so emboldened as to want to be identified.

Mr. Schumer, by this account, took umbrage at their umbrage. Do you, he asked, really think it’s better to be rhetorically pro-Wall Street or anti-Wall Street? Be realistic. Financial institutions did much wrong, he suggested, but cautioned against getting vindictive.

...

Wall Street made it share of mistakes, but it was also a victim of government policies that led to those mistakes. The requirement of making bad loans and taking the lending decision out of the hands of the lenders was a directly responsible for the debacle and they were largely the results of Democrat policies. Sen. Schumer can't admit that, and the Wall Street bankers are still reluctant to focus the blame where it belongs.

I would love to see Larry Kudlow run against him. The debates would be worth the price of admission. Sen. Schumer's approval rating is in the range of incumbents who are beatable.