Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader and he definitely deserves credit for getting an important piece of legislation passed.
This part about how he dealt with ConservaDem Joe Manchin's grandstanding is intriguing:
Friday’s chaos in the Senate ... threatened to turn into an even bigger embarrassment. After voting began on amendments to the $1.9 trillion bill, it quickly became apparent that Democrats weren’t all aligned on the issue of extending enhanced unemployment benefits, which are due to expire March 14.I suppose this could be read to mean that Democrats have no choice but to agree to everything that President Joe Manchin wants. It could be, but that's not actually what it says.
Manchin was considering voting for a Republican amendment that would have ended the benefits in July, far sooner than Democrats had initially proposed. Had he done so, House Democrats (whom party leaders hope will quickly pass the bill next week) may have objected, putting the entire package in jeopardy.
“We told him if Portman’s bill passed, it would be dead,” Schumer said. “It took him about three or four hours to realize that and when he did, he came back and said ‘OK, let’s work this out.’”
In the end, after nine hours of closed-door negotiations and the longest open Senate vote in modern history, Democrats were able to get Manchin back on board. The bill will provide a $300 weekly federal unemployment benefit through Sept. 6 and forgive taxes on up to $10,200 in 2020 unemployment income for households that made less than $150,000.
A good Clintonite reading of this would be that progressives or Democrats less conservative than Joe Manchin should never push against back against any of his demands. But If we read the Huffpost article as basically stenography for Chuck Schumer, the following would be my own speculation on what the backroom dealing was about.
Biden and Harris were agreed from the start that they would trade away the $15 minimum wage part of the COVID bill. Labor and grassroots activists pushed back on them trying to hide behind the non-binding recommendation of the non-elected parliamentarian who basically nobody outside of the Capitol had heard of before a few days ago. So they worked out a deal to put it to a floor vote (also via a parliamentary vote whose nuances mattered to precisely no one). That let Manchin and seven other conservative Democratic Senators who hate working people vote against it as a standalone issue.
Then Manchin pushed his luck, so Schumer and Biden told him, look you prick, you got to be a hero to your donors by voting down the minimum wage increase that we didn't actually want to pass anyway. But we're tired of your crap now. So if you vote to kill this bill, that's on you, Joey boy. And oh by the way, don't be surprised if West Virginia gets put on the bottom of the priority list for every single infrastructure project for the next couple of years if you screw us on this one. (Hey, I'm trying to give Biden and Schumer maximum credit here!)
Biden and Schumer would be happy for everyone to think that anti-labor Democrats like Manchin are the only ones they need to appease in these deals. But Schumer is up for re-election in 2022, and he would presumably prefer to avoid a primary challenge, and those have become kind of A Thing lately. And it does seem like he's been making more of an effort these last few months to sound like an actual Democrat than he did before.
See also:
Martin Pengelly, Joe Manchin's stimulus stand exposes dangerous fissures in Democratic ranks Guardian 03/07/2021
Meg Cunningham, Biden will not have to cater to my agenda: Sen. Joe Manchin ABC News 03/07/2021
Sarah Wire, After a surprise snag, Democrats agree to move ahead on COVID-19 relief bill Los Angeles Times 03/058/2021
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