Senate majority: Democrats face leadership struggle into next year

All right, well, Democrats are facing a new leadership struggle as they prepare to take over Congress next year. Senator Chuck Schumer now has a fight on his hands to once again lead the Senate majority. Alexis Douglas-Ader has more from Washington this morning on some of the big challenges for Schumer. Chuck, Good morning. Yeah, you know, we thought this was going to be uncontested for Senate majority leader, so the Democratic leader on the Senate side. Now it looks like Chuck Schumer will have some competition. Confident I will be elected majority leader. That was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday, confident, he said, that his fellow Democrats would once again make him Senate Majority Leader. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen says, not so fast. Yes, I am planning to run for the Senate Majority Leader. He says he saw a clear mandate from the midterms to shake things up, even among Democrats. The call was really to reject the status quo. And to reject business as usual. I'm supporting Chuck Schumer. Schumer already has support lined up and posted this on X last night. I have the votes to continue serving as Democratic leader. But he will face pushback from a progressive wave of incoming Democrats. He's willing to take risks when it matters. And Michigan's incoming Senator Abdul El-Sayed is already supporting Van Hollen, and others on the left are open to change. I will not be supporting Chuck to be re-elected as the Democratic leader. And Democrats now wait for the dust to settle. We're Democrats. We always have difference of opinions, and everyone's going to express it, and we'll see what happens. There's a lot of time between now and then. I don't see a problem with it. Now, again, Van Hollen does have some support. He puts the number around some support. He puts the number around 10 or so senators willing to back him for majority leader. That's likely to fall well short of Schumer's support, but we'll see. Jay. Doug, I mean, when you kind of get, I guess, into the minds here of how Washington works, how this works, I mean, you're a guy like Schumer who's done this for a while. It's been a while. I mean, is that just part of politics when things like this happen? I mean, you typically, especially I think on that side, they want everything to kind of be all cohesive, and obviously there's some trouble there. Well, you know, Schumer knew there was going to be some dissent, and even some of the candidates that he really supported, like in Michigan, he did so knowing that they would ultimately vote against him. It's done with kind of a nod and a wink, knowing, he thought anyway, that he would have the support he would need to become a majority leader, and he may still, I mean, he's still the odds-on favorite to become the Senate majority leader, but nevertheless, he knows that some Democrats made a commitment to vote for new leadership.