Cory Booker Just Showed the Model: Total Opposition
Will the Democrats declare victory or see it as they should, a starting gun?
With one simple decision, to filibuster on the Floor of the House for as long as he could, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a state whose US Attorney was just replaced by Alina Habba, showed Democrats the only way out of this—total opposition.
24 hours 18 minutes after starting, Booker broke the record for the longest Senate speech in the 248 year history of the United States. That speech was by segregationist Grand Wizard Senator Strom Thurmond, who was rising in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. As I write, Cory is still going.
For those who don’t know, to filibuster in this way does not allow for bathroom breaks, or sitting, or moving away from the podium. It requires that you constantly speak and only allows questions in certain forms or you lose your spot. As a man of a certain age, I have a profound admiration for Cory’s prostate. The mind reels. I am in awe.
But the important part of this is simply the act of defiance, the show of opposition to tyranny. Despite the fact that it wouldn’t stop anything in the end, it did slow them down. It prevented them, temporarily, from continuing their complete abdication of responsibility.
That is all that matters. The Democrats are not a political party, they are an opposition party. They can be a good one or a bad one. That’s up to them. They can make this a new beginning, or pat themselves on the back and go back to losing every day.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, after Chuck Schumer threw the House, and the nation under the bus, and rendered the Democrats completely irrelevant—and worse, complicit—after 37 years I quit them.
OK, I am out.
After Donald Trump targeted Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office during a state visit with the President of Ireland yesterday, with an extremely antisemitic attack, today Schumer decided he will flip-flop and vote to save the Republicans from a shutdown, unilaterally giving away the only leverage the Democrats have.
I’m not changing that anytime soon, but I will cheer for anyone, no matter where they come from, who actually does something to mitigate the damage being caused, or to expose the people doing the harm. Cory Booker actually did something, something real, something to grab onto.
If Chuck Schumer cares at all about his party or the future of America, he should step aside for Cory Booker and let him lead the Senate Democrats. This is not the time for old establishment white men to hold on to their ancient political dreams, this is the time for a fight. Cory, for once, threw a punch.
Long Live a Free America. Glory to Ukraine.
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Corey Booker didn’t just stand for 24 hours; he stood up, finally, in a chamber full of Democratic jellyfish too terrified to flex a spine. This wasn’t policy. It was defiance. It was visible, sweaty, and bladder-defying opposition. And in a time when democracy is bleeding out under the fluorescent lights of procedural apathy, that matters.
Booker shattered Strom Thurmond’s record, the same segregationist fossil who filibustered civil rights—flipping that legacy on its head like a table in a Jersey diner. And you know what? It should be the starting gun because clapping like seals for one man’s bravery while Schumer keeps sleepwalking through fascism is not a strategy. It’s surrender.
This is not the time for Schumer’s damp centrism. It’s time for warrior-leaders who understand that optics are substance when the substance is being destroyed in broad daylight. Booker showed what fighting looks like. The rest need to decide if they’re here to win—or just here to whimper.
Spelled Cory wrong in the email. Apologies.