Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) will go down in history for delivering the longest talking filibuster ever on the Senate floor. Unfortunately for him, he will be remembered for little else. Over the course of his 12 years in the Senate, he has sponsored only one bill that was ultimately signed into law: the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act of 2022, a measure that passed with near-unanimous support in both chambers of Congress.
In a video posted to X ahead of his pointless verbal marathon captioned “Time to speak up,” Booker said, “I’ve been hearing from people all over my state and indeed all over the nation calling upon folks in Congress to do more, to do things that recognize the urgency, the crisis of the moment. And so we all have a responsibility, I believe, to do something different, to cause, as [late Rep.] John Lewis said, ‘good trouble,’ and that includes me.”
On the Senate floor, he proclaimed, “Lift every voice and sing. Lift every voice and sing til earth and heaven ring.” With eyes blazing and arms gesticulating wildly, he cried out, “When is it going to be enough? My voice is inadequate. My efforts today are inadequate to stop what they’re trying to do. But we the people are powerful. For we are strong. We have changed history.”
Afterward, Republican pollster Frank Luntz told an incredulous NewsNation anchor, Leland Vittert, that Booker’s speech “may have changed the course of political history. … He struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country too.”
Luntz went as far as to say, “That speech puts Cory Booker as one of the leaders for the Democratic Party for 2028.”
But aside from elevating his otherwise unremarkable profile ahead of a possible second presidential run, Booker’s 25-hour, four-minute speech accomplished nothing. His silly spectacle offered no policy, no ideas, nor any solutions. All he proved is that he has remarkable physical stamina. But if that’s all we looked for in our leaders, we’d elect a team of Navy SEALs to run our government.
It’s unfortunate Booker doesn’t channel his energy into efforts that might actually improve the lives of the people of New Jersey?
Perhaps more notable than what Booker said during his remarks is what he left out. For example, he did not condemn the ongoing violence at Tesla dealerships. Nor did he mention the Democrat in Boise, Idaho, who allegedly struck a Trump supporter with his car last weekend, or the man in Flagstaff, Arizona, who reportedly boxed in and repeatedly punched a 61-year-old female Tesla driver.
He also omitted any reference to the Biden administration’s issuance of several million Social Security numbers to noncitizens, the billions in waste and fraud already uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or the assault on executive power from a growing number of partisan federal judges trying to prevent Trump from implementing his agenda.
About 10 hours into the speech, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) briefly stepped away from the Senate chamber to share his thoughts on social media. He assured us that Booker’s premise was “sound and important.” It was neither.
According to Murphy, Booker was taking a stand against what he claimed were President Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, as well as his “corruption” and “lawlessness.”
“What Donald Trump is doing is not normal, and so we can’t normalize it,” Murphy said. “So this all-night filibuster with Sen. Booker, that I’m helping him with, hopefully it rallies the consciences of our colleagues, hopefully it helps explain to America the urgency of this moment.”
In a Wednesday op-ed, Fox News’s David Marcus highlighted the ultimate irony of Booker’s use of the filibuster — and Murphy’s full-throated support of it. When Democrats controlled the Senate during Biden’s presidency, both men called for the filibuster to be abolished, arguing it was both an abuse of power and racist.
In the meantime, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has launched a series of “Resistance Labs” aimed at teaching people how to push back against Trump, whom she insists wants to be a dictator.
The progressive congresswoman told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “What we decided is that we really need to help Americans understand what happens when democracies fall, when dictators take over. We’ve been pretty complacent in America. We haven’t had to really deal with this in any real way. And now I think people need to understand what are the lessons from other countries?”
Most recently, Democrats have turned to district court judges to stop Trump via a series of nationwide injunctions. In testimony before two House Judiciary subcommittees this week, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stated, “Fifteen District Judges effectively seized control of various executive branch duties in the first six weeks of the current presidency through nationwide injunctions. This is potentially a judicial coup d’etat. It clearly violates the Constitution and more than 200 years of American history.”
Booker’s 25-hour filibuster, Jayapal’s “Resistance Labs,” and the party’s reliance on the judiciary to nullify executive authority are only the latest weapons the Left has deployed in its war against Trump.
Consumed by their obsessive hatred of Trump, the sole mission of the Democratic Party is to resist Trump. This has left little room for actual governance or for advancing the will of the people they were elected to represent.
DEMOCRATS SHOULDN’T GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT THEIR SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS
Too entrenched in bitterness to recalibrate, Democrats fail to see that these tactics stopped being strategic long ago. They’ve become the party’s brand. Resistance isn’t just a stance anymore — it’s their platform. What remains is a party adrift, stuck in an endless loop of permanent opposition.
This isn’t leadership. And every day, that reality is becoming clearer to the people.