Senate speech: Non-stop 25 hrs, what was Booker trying to achieve?

Bruce Wolpe

The Democrats have been under intense pressure to find an effective way to challenge US President Donald Trump without control of either chamber of Congress or a de facto opposition leader.

They may have just found one. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took the Senate floor on Monday evening in Washington to give a speech lambasting Trump’s actions. He didn’t stop talking – aside for the occasional question from a fellow Democrat – until Tuesday night, 25 hours later.

Booker’s speech set a new record for the longest continuous speech in the Senate, surpassing Senator Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour speech in 1957 to try to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

This was during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during the Second World War. The army was the great desegregation force in the 1940s, and Eisenhower, as president in the 1950s, was strongly in favour of civil rights.

In 1957, Congress was going to pass a civil rights bill that would make it harder for officials in southern states, in particular, to prevent Black people from voting. So Thurmond, the South Carolina senator and fierce proponent of segregation, launched what was (until today) the longest speech in Senate history to oppose it.

Thurmond’s speech was a filibuster, an extended speech in the Senate to attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill or confirmation. Thurmond, however, was unable to stop the enactment of the bill.

Senators engage in filibusters when they know they’re going to lose, especially when it’s a piece of legislation they really dislike or disagree with. Because they can’t stop the passage of the bill, they use the filibuster to call attention to their opposition to it. The intention is to rally the troops and say, “I’m standing with you, even if this vote goes the other way”.

In 2016, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who represents the state of Connecticut where the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place, launched a nearly 15-hour filibuster to force the Republican Senate leadership to allow votes on two gun control measures.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz also spoke all night – 21 hours in total – against Obamacare in 2013. It wasn’t all focused on health policy; he filled the time by reading the children’s book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss.

Booker’s speech was not technically a filibuster – he wasn’t holding the floor to talk against a specific bill, as Thurmond was. He was giving time to his Democratic colleagues to just control the shape of the general debate about Trump.

Senators use speeches like this when they’re losing on an issue, and Booker feels the Democrats are currently losing to Trump. They have been unable to stop any of his executive actions, so they feel they need to cut through in some way to reach the American people.

Trump is controlling the narrative and the media environment. And the Democratic leadership has been unable to counter it, even though, at the grassroots level, Democrats and many others who voted for Trump are really angry.

Booker ran for the presidency in 2020 and ultimately yielded to Joe Biden, and I expect we’ll hear much more from him in 2028 when the next presidential election occurs. He is most likely going to run again.