A New American Leader Emerges

      Cory Booker on Tuesday provided us with a moral moment, a ray of light in the wreckage of warrantless arrests and heartless, destructive firings escalating by the week in Donald Trump’s America.

      The Democratic senator from New Jersey spoke — with force, coherence, dignity and humanity — for 25 hours and 4 minutes straight on the U.S. Senate floor, the longest one-man filibuster in the nation’s history. He never sat down. He never took a bathroom break. He spoke from 7 p.m. Monday until 8:04 p.m. Tuesday.

      “These are not normal times in our nation, and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” said Booker. “The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.” Afterwards he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he was inspired to speak by the words and actions of his constituents.

      Repeatedly during his exhausting marathon, Booker told listeners and viewers, who tuned in by the tens of thousands, that what’s going on in this country is not a matter of “right or left” but one of “right or wrong.” He spoke of the strain on the elderly and infirm forced to drive up to 100 miles to Social Security offices they can no longer call. He spoke of the greed of billionaires relentlessly pushing another tax cut on their own behalf at the expense of fired medical researchers, veterans, educators, scientists and others who’ve been serving the country and its citizens. He spoke of his own roots as an African American, descended from slaves, as he broke a filibuster record held for nearly 70 years by arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

      Booker spoke, and he spoke, and he spoke, aided at times by Democrats in the Senate who came in increasing numbers to listen and stepped in with questions to give Booker a chance to rest his voice and brain. Throughout, Booker remained gracious and grateful to the American people and his colleagues.

      This morning, the hub website politicalwire.com published a remarkable assessment Republican pollster Frank Luntz gave of the event to NewsNation. Said Luntz:

I want to emphasize what Cory Booker did over the last 24 hours may have changed the course of political history. I watched a lot of it. I listened to his words… 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. Of course, every Republican watching will say, this is nonsense. But he is not speaking just to Republicans, he is speaking to Americans, and what I saw over the last 25 hours absolutely blew me away.

      There are times, the late Congressman and Civil Rights Leader John Lewis said, that we all should be intent on “making good trouble.” Corey Booker made good trouble on Tuesday.

      Now it’s our turn.

This piece first appeared on Jerry Lanson’s Substack—where he regularly takes on the various Trump/Musk attacks on democracy.