Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
Since Inauguration Day, party activists have been begging elected Democrats to “do something” to interfere with Donald Trump’s agenda. Senate Democrats had the chance on March 14. They, or at least the ten needed to short-circuit any potential filibuster, decided the “something” involved had unacceptable consequences (a government shutdown they feared they would be blamed for triggering).
That left the minority party in Congress with no identifiable leverage point until at least the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Nearly everything else Team Trump wants to do legislatively is expected to be dumped into a budget-reconciliation bill that Democrats cannot filibuster or influence because it will be designed to pass on a strict party-line vote, with President Trump personally whipping the congressional GOP (just as he did earlier to pass the spending bill and a budget resolution).
So what’s a congressional Democrat to do? Make a lot of noise, apparently. Some (e.g., Bernie Sanders and AOC in their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour and Chris Murphy and Maxwell Frost in their Town Hall series) are hitting the road and getting away from Washington to rouse the party faithful directly. But another, New Jersey’s Cory Booker, chose to stay in the Senate and speak against Trump’s agenda “for as long as I am physically able.” Booker, who was not one of the Democrats who caved on the spending bill, took the floor at 7 p.m. Monday and has been going for over 18 hours now. It is not, technically, a filibuster since he is not trying to stop a specific piece of legislation; he is instead trying to dramatize the scope and intensity of the threat that Trump, Elon Musk, and other presidential stooges pose to government as we know it and to democracy itself. Eighteen hours does provide a lot of time to speak expansively, but the New York Times briefly summarized Booker’s take:
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for — from our highest offices — a sense of common decency,” Mr. Booker said in his speech. “These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.”
Mr. Musk’s feed on X, his social media platform, was active late into the night, but it made no mention of Mr. Booker or his all-night speech. Neither did Mr. Trump’s Truth Social feed.
As viewers followed along on Mr. Booker’s official YouTube channel, he quoted from celebrated speeches by Representative John Lewis and Senator John McCain, both of whom have died. At one point, he spent around 30 minutes reading an account by a Canadian citizen, Jasmine Mooney, about her detention in the United States by immigration enforcement officers.
Booker’s McCain reference was part of an extended paean to endangered federal health-care services, notably Medicaid, as CNN reported:
In his remarks, Booker warned of potential cuts to Medicaid by congressional Republicans and the harm that would cause to his constituents and Americans across the country. …
At one point, Booker invoked the late GOP Sen. John McCain, reflecting on McCain’s pivotal health care vote in 2017, and drawing parallels to the current moment.
“It is maddening in this country to create greater and greater health care crisis and for us not to solve it but to battle back and forth between trying to make incremental changes or to tear it all down with no plan to make it better, leaving more Americans suffering,” Booker said.
Cory Booker is not a stranger to what even his many admirers acknowledge as publicity stunts. A memorable Booker attention-grabber occurred when, as a first-term city councilman in Newark, he moved into a tent in a parking lot outside a squalid housing project to attest to its deterioration and the city’s indifference. He got results and eventually became mayor of the city before winning his first of three Senate elections in 2012. He hasn’t always been successful, though, as reflected in his dismal 2020 presidential campaign that ended before the first contest in Iowa.
At 55, Booker is young enough to try again if he wishes. But for the moment, he’s just another disempowered Democrat trying to placate angry constituents and activists who may have unrealistic ideas about what a minority party in a governing trifecta regime can actually do to throw sand in the gears of the Trump train. If talk can make them feel better, Booker has become the man with the plan.
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