A Speech for the books...

Given by the Senator who Trump probably considers a "DEI" electee?????......

A week and a half ago, I watched Cory Booker yield the floor after breaking Strom Thurmond’s record for the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history (24 hours and 18 minutes.) Cory’s feat was, to say the least, an astonishing 25 hours and 5 minute demonstration of physical and oratorical stamina—the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades.

Some have sought to diminish Booker’s achievement by pointing out that his speech wasn’t technically a filibuster. They’re right in a procedural sense. A filibuster is an attempt to prevent a specific piece of legislation from passing. While Booker was not trying to stop any legislation, his speech was still in the finest tradition of the filibuster -to talk as long as you are physically able without yielding the floor- and did remain within the rules of debate—chief among them: you can’t sit down or leave the floor-even to address “bodily functions.”

Still, every “filibuster” is, at its core, a speech. While most of the previous “filibuster-ers” have run up the clock by reading the Constitution, encyclopedia entries, and even Dr. Seuss (Ted Cruz, anyone?), Booker pulled no such stunts.

He also went so far as to remove his chair so he didn’t inadvertently sit as the hours rolled by. He fasted beginning Friday, March 28th, and deliberately dehydrated himself by not drinking anything since Sunday, March 30th. Not something I’d recommend to 55 year olds, Cory! But the point is: He stood. He spoke. He didn’t resort to gimmicks. And he spoke in the soaring oratory that once filled the Senate chamber but sadly has long since faded.

Like Booker, Strom too deliberately dehydrated himself before his speech via daily steam baths. But unlike the current Senator, Strom sustained himself with “diced pumpernickel, bits of hamburger, and sips of orange juice;” Booker ate nothing—but he STOOD! And he THUNDERED with the best of the old-time orators.

At times, Booker did employ another parliamentary maneuver: he recognized fellow Democrats to ask questions—extended ones—so he could briefly rest his voice (not his legs, no sitting!). But the questions posed were relevant to Booker’s critique of the Trump administration policies that he argued were wreaking havoc on the lives of average Americans. Booker read sections from more than 200 letters from both his constitutents in New Jersey as well as others seeking help from across the country to illustrate the devastation that Trump has caused in the 10 weeks since he was sworn in—and this was several days BEFORE the tariffs went into effect and tanked the stock market.

I vividly recall my US History II undergrad professor insisting that Strom cheated when we discussed Thurmond’s last ditch effort to stop passage of the 1957 Civil Right Act. I checked my old class notes -yes, I still have them—I’m a historian!- and as the story goes, three hours into Strom’s speech, Barry Goldwater asked how much longer he intended to go on. Strom said he had another hour in him. Goldwater asked if he would temporarily yield the floor so that he (Goldwater) could insert something into the Congressional Record. Strom reportedly used the opportunity to leave the floor briefly to use the men’s room. (Additionally, Thurmond had his aides position a bucket in the cloakroom, so that he could keep one foot on the Senate floor while “doing his business,” if necessary. Reportedly, he never used it.)

My professor, Dr. Bob Spector, who was also a practicing attorney (and BTW earned his JD and PhD simultaneously -at Boston College and Boston University, respectively -in night programs, while teaching high school full-time!) credited Wayne Morse of Oregon (at the time a Republican) with the true record: 22 hours and 26 minutes, earned while filibustering the Submerged Lands Act of 1953. (That Act returned ownership of submerged lands off all coasts of the US to the respective coastal states.)

Strom’s speech was a last-ditch effort to stem the slowly growing tide of support for the civil rights movement, which had gained momentum after the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Despite Strom’s marathon, be it 21 or 24+ hours, it was ultimately for naught. Two hours after he stopped speaking, the Senate passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act—the first significant civil rights legislation since 1875. It sought to protect African Americans’ right to vote, especially in the South, and prohibited attempts to intimidate or coerce individuals from voting in federal elections. The Act established the Civil Rights Division in the DOJ, created a Civil Rights Commission, and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote.

The irony of Cory Booker—a Black man—breaking Strom Thurmond’s record should not be lost on anyone. Had Strom succeeded, Booker wouldn’t have the right to vote, let alone hold office. No Stanford BA/MA. No Yale Law School. No Rhodes Scholarship. No Senate floor (unless, of course, as maybe the night cleaner.). His parents certainly wouldn’t have been among IBM’s first Black executives.

Most of the coverage of Booker’s speech has focused on its length, and not its substance—another example of the lack of subject matter expertise among the current crop of “major correspondents” at all the networks-and most newspaper columnists, for that matter. None noted that Booker’s speech, while sharply critical of the Trump administration, was deeply rooted in the American tradition of moral calls to conscience and the deeply rooted conviction that our country must continue to work to extend the benefits of liberty to all. Like Lincoln’s appeal to the “better angels of our nature” in his 1861 Inaugural Address, when he appealed for reason and compassion even as the country was racing past him toward civil war, Booker called for a return to a collective sense of duty and bipartisanship. He reminisced about dinners with…Ted Cruz!!! -and 20+ hours into his speech called out Cruz’s humorous tweet as Booker was about to eclipse Cruz’s 21+ hour filibuster of Obamacare: “I might have to pull a fire alarm to stop this!” The floor and gallery-packed at this point with members of both parties- thankfully laughed.

In March 1865, as the Civil War ground to its conclusion, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address was not crowing or triumphant, but once again sought healing:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, …to bind up the nation’s wounds… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Booker, too, reached for higher ground as he began to speak:

“Tonight I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able… because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis… so many of the people that have been reaching out… identify themselves as Republicans.”

He went on to chronicle all the ways in which the Trump administration is hurting ordinary, hard-working people while willfully, indeed gleefully, running roughshod over Constitutional norms, laws, and mores.

He drove his points home by reading those personal testimonies to illustrate the harm being done to the average American by Trump-era policies: shuttering USAID - (which cut $2B of agriculture contracts to US farmers, which will inevitably drive many of them into bankrupcy,) endangering pandemic readiness while advising AGAINST vaccination during a deadly measles outbreak—(just not applicable to RFK Jr.’s kids; they are already vaccinated, you know)—gutting the EPA, NOAA, FEMA, education, USIP, the IRS, …and the list grows by the day.

He choked up as he read a letter from a woman fighting Parkinson’s disease, who related her fear of losing Social Security and Medicaid coverage, asking who would help her family care for her. He told of his Dad’s long and painful decline from the same condition, noting how hard his Mom had worked caring for him for 20 years—but noted that his parents didn’t have to worry about losing their hard earned benefits. He detailed the effects of Musk’s chainsaw approach to “cutting excesses,” halting the “Ponzi scheme” of Social Security and even noted the deportation of a legal resident due to “administrative error” without being able to bring him back. (And may there be a special extra-deep ring in Dante’s Inferno for Chief Justice Roberts who just put a hold on a lower court’s order to return this man to the US. But I digress…. )

CAN’T get him back? Really? I thought this was the toughest administration ever. The strongest!! The most POWERFUL!! And they can’t call a third-rate, third-world country who we are PAYING to take these deportees and say, “OOPS! Send that guy back?”

So much for the “strength” of this administration.

“These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such,” Booker said. “This is our moral moment. This is when the most precious ideas of our country are being tested…. Where does the Constitution live, on paper or in our hearts?”

He closed with a tribute to one of his heros and mentors, the late Rep. John Lewis:

“He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation. I want you to redeem the dream…. Let’s be bolder in America…It starts with the people of the United States of America—that’s how this country started: ‘We the people.’…We need that now from all Americans. This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it's right or wrong.

“Let’s get in good trouble.

“My friend, madam president, I yield the floor.”

Let’s all be inspired by that battle cry from Cory Booker—echoing the 250+ year tradition of great Americans from all political parties who, when it mattered most, put country over politics, and courage over profiles. And let’s be very sure that while we might occasionally yield the floor, we never yield the country.