For 25 hours and five minutes, Senator Cory Booker stood on the Senate floor to give what is now the longest speech in the history of that body. He didn’t eat, he didn’t use the bathroom, he just kept on talking. When it was over, he had surpassed the record set in 1957 by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina that was intended to thwart efforts to pass civil rights legislation
Senator Booker’s goal was to get something going amongst those who are looking for leadership, looking for a way to challenge the shockingly anti-democratic measures taken by President Trump in his first two months in office. The list is well known: the deportation of international students; threats to institutions of higher learning; threats to private law firms; shutting down entire federal agencies; firing thousands of federal workers; tariffs on foreign goods based on bogus claims; and executive orders on any number of initiatives that by-pass legislative authority, and on and on.
Without majorities in the House and Senate, without conventional legislative tools, Democrats everywhere have been wondering what can be done. Certainly AOC and Bernie Sanders have been doing their part, but beyond that that there is little sense that other elected Democrats have much understanding of or taste for the fight ahead.
Enter Senator Booker.
Who knows ultimately what impact his speech will have, but coming on the same day that Democrats cut the margin of victory in half in two deep red Florida congressional districts in special elections and Democrats won a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court seat we can only wonder if a tide is turning.
I think we know by now that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not the guy to show the way in the Senate and beyond, and though it’s too early to say that Senator Booker is the guy, he has certainly put himself in the mix. He also has done no damage to any presidential aspirations he may have in 2028.
Many of the headlines today about Booker’s speech hit on the same theme which is in effect that it may have been a stunt but it was a pretty effective stunt. Why is that, we may ask? Perhaps precisely because he showed what has been so lacking in the opposition: passion, stamina, and focus. He gave so many what they have been looking for.
No single speech is going to be the answer, but let it begin here.