I am kind of too scared to ask here, but what did it actually achieve?
Raised his national profile. If he keeps up political theater like this for the next 3 year’s he’ll have a good shot at the Democratic nomination.
Nothing but it made Democeats feel like it did something and that is all that matters.
Booker’s speech was an audition for Schumer’s job. He laid out his vision of the Democratic agenda, and showed strength doing it, contrasting with that craven, corrupt, simpering, weak, vile, weenie Schumer.
Schumer is in the way, and needs to retire immediately, and make way for AOC to take his seat.
If Schumer leaves, Booker become Minority leader, and AOC goes to the Senate, that speech will have acvomplished a lot.
Bookers 24h subathon showed strength nor vision. There was nothing differing him from Schumer except his age and skin color. According to DNC logic this makes Booker a worse candidate than Schumer.
It set a new record. That’s about it
Nothing by itself. But if it can encourage other senators to filibuster, and more importantly, to organize to filibuster together , the impact could be paralyzing.
To take an obvious example, for half a century, from say 1910 to 1964-5, there were more than enough votes in the US senate to enact civil rights legislation, as southerners only made up 22 or so of the 96-100 senators then (no Hawaii or Alaska for part of that).
But that legislation never happened. And the reason why it didn’t was that southern senators were able to filibuster so effectively that the legislation could never be brought to the floor, or to force its withdrawal if it got there.
It’s not that the votes on that specific bill weren’t there. It’s just that under the leadership of Sen Richard Russel of Georgia (who the “Russel Senate Office Building” is named after), the southern senators understood the way to block legislation was to filibuster not just the bill in question, but any law that was about to lapse that was so important economically that senators couldn’t afford to let that happen.
So they organized, filibustered key bills, set up “watches” where at least one senator had to be on the floor to defeat any quorum calls (which ends a filibuster, as you do not actually have to be talking to filibuster a bill), and filibustered not just votes on key bills, but even votes on motions to bring those bills out of committee to the floor.
Moreover, since these filibusters weren’t on the bill itself, it was easy for an individual senator to say they were against another bill, or another motion, and make it seem like an unrelated objection, when it was really all part of a comprehensive strategy.
Eventually, the impending economic doom created enough pressure to get any civil rights bill withdrawn in order to let those other bills pass, which was the southerners asking price.
Obviously, the democrats now aren’t doing that. But they could. And by generating headlines by filibustering, he encourages other senators to do so, if only for popularity.
Knocked Strom Thurmond’s racist ass filibuster of the civil rights act out of the #1 slot.
And that is absolutely all.
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Politics isn’t sportsball, so no. Breaking arbitrary stats doesn’t mean shit in terms of making material changes in the world, which is what politics is about.
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It is not unreasonable to ask why he didn’t use the filibuster to block actual legislation, instead of just I terupting procedure.
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It’s better than nothing. But that’s all it achieved.
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they elected oz in the very next session; using a filibuster to prevent his confirmation is how you use a filibuster effectively.
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the same way thurmond did it; you secure the votes behinds the scenes and then throw a filibuster when it’s time to vote to turn up the pain; not when there’s nothing on the table and no one around like booker did it.
I guess I’m just a little more cynical and you’re just a little more idealistic. If you review this thread, and the many other threads posted about this speech, in full you’ll see I’m not the only one who feels like this is bare minimum effort from Democrat leadership. Agree to disagree.
Best summation yet.
Let’s be fair now: he also raised his national profile among the party faithful.
Good for that piece of shit Zionist genocidaire then, I guess.
Lol yeah, that too.
I too grew up in an era of action movies, where the good guy decisively self-defenses the bad guy to death, saves the world, goes home and has marital relations with the prom queen. It’s a powerful story, but ultimately it’s just a story.
Peaceful resistance does work, but there isn’t a single event that achieves change. It has to be an accumulation.
Rosa Park’s arrest didn’t achieve anything “in terms of change”.
Ghandi’s protest fasts didn’t achieve anything “in terms of change”.
When the Baltics had their singing revolutions, there wasn’t a single performance that achieved anything “in terms of change”.
All these were parts of larger efforts of peaceful resistance that culminated in change.
What did Cory Booker’s speech achieve? It’s too early to say. It’s possible it will be part of an accumulation that culminates in measurable results. On the other hand, it’s possible cynicism will poison the resistance and it will achieve nothing. We’ll only know once the history is written.
This is essentially what I was going to say (though more poetic).
I’m of two minds. I admit that i cringe a bit that he would even call this “good trouble”. John Lewis’ “good trouble” was nearly getting beaten to death. How Booker can apply such a label to an act of protest that didn’t even meaningfully delay any noteworthy business is frankly amazing to me.
But also, he did fucking do something. He specifically articulated that we should all be alarmed, and he declared that he intends to not cooperate with or normalize what is happening. Low bar? Yes. But we all have to start somewhere.
I actually like Cory Booker. He was my third or fourth pick among the 20-something candidates that ran in 2020.
I’ll say this: this act is not enough to convince me that elected Democrats are going to do anything meaningful in the next two years. But the absence of it would’ve made me far less likely to expect it. Good for him.
It achieved false catharsis, the main scam product Democrats are always selling. Performative nonsense immediately contradicted by their actual (lack of) actions. Immediately afterwards they helped confirm a Trump judicial appointment with help from Booker. His long speech wasn’t even to delay any legislation. It has no so-called momentum, which you can note has no stated descriptors in the other comment. Momentum for what? Sitting on your hands and then voting for them again in 4 years? This is not a real political party, it is just the controlled opposition of the US political duopoly trying its usual parlor tricks to make its potential voters stop recognizing how they aren’t cleaning house or really doing anything at all.
Real parties do exist. It is a struggle due to the aforementioned duopoly and general level of political education in the USA, but it is a struggle worth joining because this is the only “opposition” you will ever see being forwarded by the Democratic Party by its own volition. Every bit of progress has been hard fought and its vanguard has always been left organizing outside of the major parties. Join that vsnguard!
It’s political momentum. Same thing bernie and AOC are doing. None of them have changed anything yet, it’s just getting attention and support for future acts
What does anything achieve on a long enough timeline? The same nothingness, but for 25 hours the entire senate could do nothing but bear witness to an unyielding resistance to the cruelties currently in motion. May not be much but some will find inspiration in those that continue to make ‘good trouble’ I personally found a spark of hope and I’m a real cynic tbh
Think of it like a protest. Most protests don’t DO anything, but he forced the entire senate to sit and listen to him for 25 hrs rant about how bad things have gotten. I’m sure there was work and stuff they were supposed to vote on that he effectively delayed. But that’s all it really was, a record breaking protest.
But it literally it was on the news for a day, that’s it.
Protests go on for multi days and have a physical effect and achieve discomfort.
Meanwhile, I don’t see the speech achieving a lot of that.
Sure, but how many protests legally prevent half of Congress from doing anything?
Edit: rewrite for better negation agreement.
Why does it have to achieve an immediate result to be a worthy action?
What did your comment achieve?
Nothing. It was cringe and should be condemned. Don’t let hasbara bots convince you otherwise.
It slowed the process if nothing else. Every day that this administration can be slowed down is a win.
What did a single Trump rally achieve? Nothing. What did multiple years of Trump rallies achieve?
Fascism
Will Cory Booker be giving multiple 25 hour speeches per day for multiple years? Because I just don’t see Dems doing much more than coasting off this for the next four years.
The only actionable thing that was accomplished was a black senator took the record for longest speech from a segregationist arguing against people like Booker being able to safely vote. Which for that alone he should be congrulated and celebrated.
Yeah, I’ll be honest I’m pretty tuned out on the Dems, but the first time I heard about this was an unwanted donation solicitation that started like “I just got off the senate floor…” and it made it feel so transparent that right now, it’s performative bullshit.
Could be the start of something, but it won’t be until the Dems prove they’re effective at something other than fundraising to lose elections.
Well, we will need to wait and see. The first Dem to consistently build an authentic movement though, wins with ease.
Dem to consistently build an authentic movement
The whole point of Dems for the last forty years is they don’t know what authenticity is. They think it’s a marketing term and not a human condition.
Individual Trump rallys still convinced people to vote for him. Or are you saying that running for president in 4 years is what Booker’s doing about Trump?
Absolutely nothing. It’s nice that he broke the record of some asshole racist but functionally nothing has changed.
Democrats are just as impotent today as they were yesterday and throughout the Biden administration.
