The New Jersey senator’s record-breaking speech denouncing Trump’s agenda has become a rallying point for a frustrated party.
Cory Booker, D-NJ, took to the Senate floor Monday at 7 p.m. ET and decided to hold it “for as long as I am physically able.” He did so all night and into the morning, reading aloud letters and emails from everyday Americans as President Donald Trump’s arbitrary and painful spending cuts continued. By late Tuesday afternoon, Booker was still speaking, occasionally leaning on the podium, but determined to keep going.
It wasn’t technically a filibuster that Booker conducted. He wasn’t talking about delaying a vote on any specific agenda item. Instead, Booker said, in delivering his marathon speech, he was “disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate.” After watching his heroic 25-hour effort, I say our country would be better off if promoting the values that Booker espouses were the Senate’s normal business.
These numbers speak to a rabid thirst for leadership from Democratic political figures. I eagerly await the behind-the-scenes report on Booker’s speech, including how much planning and coordination, if any, there was among Senate Democrats. The third-term senator chairs the caucus’s Strategic Communications Committee, so I would assume he at least gave Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a heads-up before taking the floor.
The question is whether Democrats can keep that momentum going beyond this particular moment. We’ll have to see if the party can do it when there’s a tipping point, that is, when there’s a time when Republicans demand they step aside and they instead throw themselves into the gears of the federal government. It makes little sense to engage in such protests when the stakes are low and when they are high.
I am here despite his speech,” said Booker, who spoke openly in the Senate about his roots as a descendant of both slaves and slave-owners. He added, “I am here because the stronger he was, the stronger the people were.”
Still, Booker centered his speech on a call for his party to find its resolve, saying, “We all need to look in the mirror and say, ‘We’re going to do better.’”
Booker also read what he said were campaign letters. One writer spoke of the Republican president’s plans to annex Greenland and Canada and was alarmed by what he saw as an “evolving constitutional crisis.”
He suffered through cramps as the day wore on, he said. Yet as his speech stretched into the evening, his voice grew stronger with emotion, and House members of the Congressional Black Caucus stood on the edge of the Senate floor in support.
Throughout his determined performance, Booker repeatedly invoked Georgia civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis on Tuesday, arguing that it would take more than just talking to defeat an opponent like Thurmond.
You think we got civil rights one day because Strom Thurmond — after a filibuster for 24 hours — you think we got civil rights “We got civil rights because he got on the floor one day and said, ‘I saw the light,'” Booker said. “No, we got civil rights because people marched for it.” Booker said he ultimately called on all Americans to respond not with resistance to Trump’s actions but with generosity and kindness for their ommunities.
