Politics / April 2, 2025
The New Jersey senator broke Strom Thurmond’s record for speaking on the Senate floor. May Booker break the back of the neo-segregationism that Trump represents.
(Senate Television via AP)
Senator Cory Booker, currently one of five Black senators, spoke on the Senate floor for more than 25 hours. He broke the record of the notoriously racist Senator Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act for 24 hours and 18 minutes. The moment couldn’t have been more perfect.
Of course, in Donald Trump’s America, this moment will be erased from history in federal records and museums, as Trump and his unqualified DEI hires—Daddy’s rich, Everyone hates me, I’m an incompetent white guy—attempt to erase the achievements of Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, and women scientists, artists, military leaders, sports stars, and politicians. But in Cory Booker’s America, that won’t happen. Let this moment lead us to living in Cory Booker’s America.
I’m not a ride-or-die Booker fan. I like him, but I didn’t support him in 2020. I see him as a center-left Dem with a corporate lean. That’s not me. But Booker rose to this moment.
I also want to say, and not to take anything away from Booker, that people who’ve come out to protest—at Republican and Democratic town halls, at #TeslaTakedowns, at federal workers’ demonstrations, outside federal buildings, outside local government buildings; all of those who’ve called their congresspeople for the last two months—made this 24-hour, 20-minute moment possible.
Booker has a good heart. That’s clear. But he has a stronger spine now that we’ve shown we’re behind him.
Booker said so himself. He started this, he told us, because his constituents asked him to do more and to take more risks. He referenced the late Representative John Lewis and his exhortation to “make good trouble” repeatedly.
As writer Peter Sagal quipped on Bluesky: “[It was] like a combination of Jimmy Stewart in ‘Mister Smith Goes to Washington’ and Jerry Lewis in the last hours of his telethon. Compelling viewing!” That might date both of us, but it’s a perfect description.
Many of us have been begging Democrats to focus attention on their constituents, whether Democrat or Republican, who are being hurt by these awful Trump-Musk moves. It’s good politics, and it’s good story-telling. (Democrats lag way behind in telling good stories.) Booker did that Monday night into Tuesday night, reading letters from constituents and other Americans, telling the stories of veterans and elders and sick people and young people terrified of losing their benefits or losing their hold on economic security.
And the Democrats who stood up to support Booker—by asking questions, to give him a few minutes of respite, did the same. It was the best showing by Democrats since the inauguration—in fact, well before that.
At least 39 of 47 Democratic senators joined him.
Sadly, no John Fetterman. (What happened to him?) Also, no Bernie Sanders. Sanders has been doing great work gathering crowds around the country, but this seems like the wrong event to skip. (I could find no evidence that he had a competing engagement or wasn’t well.)
This isn’t a compendium of Booker’s best lines, but I want to mention a few things that broke through: When he said “There is so much heartbreak in this country now,” it resonated with me and hundreds of other people on social media, because it’s true; when he told a story about helping his father with Alzheimer’s use a public restroom, it was both poignant and very funny. And as Booker said about Thurmond: “I’m not here because of his speech. I’m here in spite of his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”
We still are. Get out there and show it.
