On Tuesday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker broke the record for the longest-ever speech on the Senate floor with a marathon 25-hour, eight-minute address. This was not technically a filibuster, as Booker was not holding up any particular legislation, but more of a call to arms against the overreaches of the Trump administration as the Democratic party finds itself somewhat rudderless in the face of emergency.
He did not read children’s books or meander for long stretches off topic, as other filibustering legislators have done, but laid out in detail the threat of Trump’s attempts to consolidate power, the harms suffered by those at the receiving end of mass government cuts, the oligarchic endpoint of relatively unregulated corporate and private accumulation of wealth, and so on. In doing so, he seemed to jolt some energy into a beleaguered political movement whose base seems to be asking, with increasing urgency, “is no one going to do anything about all this?”
That jolt was bolstered that same night by the results of a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court election, now on record as the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, with Elon Musk rolling out millions in spending that included a return to his legally uncertain strategy of handing out huge novelty checks to voters. Despite this deep-set MAGA interest, Democratic-backed Judge Susan Crawford won by some ten points in an election that was seen as a referendum on MAGA’s influence in the purple state.
Between Booker’s record, Crawford’s win, and the narrowing of GOP margins in two Florida House wins — with Republicans winning relatively slim victories in cherry-red districts that had swung heavily towards Trump just six months ago — it did feel, tentatively, like a vibe shift day. The bad news keeps coming — new sweeping tariffs, another law firm has now fully capitulated to Trump’s power grab, and we keep learning more about the sheer extent of the lawlessness with Trump’s summary removals of immigrants to a Salvadoran mega-prison — but maybe that just makes the slivers of good news more crucial.
I was on commentator Arnie Arnesen’s radio show a few days ago, and while the panelists all agreed that we cannot simply vote our way out of this — you can’t have an electoral solution to asymmetric attacks on democracy itself of the sort that Russia and Hungary have engaged in even as they still hold elections — I made the case that electoral losses for the MAGA crowd crack the façade. The reason that Trump and his cadre have tried to move so fast and subjugate perceived civil society enemies with such ferocity is, as I made the case for last week, precisely to make the takeover of our institutions seem inevitable and resistance feel like pushing back against a tidal wave.
When the MAGA crowd then loses an election they had gone all-in on — Musk farcically insisted that the Wisconsin election “might decide the future of America and Western Civilization” on account of its potential to prevent Wisconsin gerrymandering down the line — it breaks the illusion. Like the Signalgate controversy, it has implications in its own right but also puts into stark relief something straightforward: these are not formidable people we’re dealing with. These are idiots, who latched onto power by peddling whatever forms of snake oil seemed most apt, standing on a framework built over decades by wealthy libertarians and Christian nationalists that saw them as useful tools to advance their agenda and then lost control of them.
This fact also underscores why it’s important that Booker did what he did. Some detractors seemed upset that, functionally, Booker did not impede any Senate business, did not really derail any legislation or block any nominations, that it was all performance. Well, folks, I’ve got some news for you about politics. What did Donald Trump win on, ultimately? What policies did he roll out that his voter base latched onto? Save for the nebulous notion of mass deportation, basically nothing.
Yet (setting aside the core voter base that simply wanted more fascism and racism) he won swing voters on the idea that he was for the working man and would improve the economy, a completely vibes-based analysis that was obviously wrong and is now being shown to be wrong. He’s a showman, and that’s not everything, but it does win elections. Showmanship isn’t necessarily some dirty thing that mars politics; it is politics, to some extent. That doesn’t mean that the opposition to Trump should go all-in on spectacle and leave the policy behind. The policy is what the spectacle is for. That’s always been true but it’s especially so in an information space that has shifted to atomized individual experiences and which the right-wing has come to so thoroughly dominate– social media sites, these days, are the main vectors for information.
So did Booker functionally do anything from a Senate business standpoint? No, but everyone’s talking about him; the livestream hit some 350,000 concurrent viewers on YouTube and he was the talk of sites like X, Bluesky, and TikTok. He shattered the prior Senate speech record of South Carolina senator and segregationist creep Strom Thurmond, who in 1957 spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and that alone is a forceful narrative. (Incidentally, guess when Thurmond left the Senate? It was in 2003, and not because of electoral defeat, but because he died in office at age 100).
Some hay has been made out of the fact that, immediately after Booker finished his marathon speech, Democratic senators did not oppose unanimous consent to advance the confirmation of MAGA acolyte Matt Whitaker (best known for a legally dubious stint as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term) as NATO ambassador. Is it great to have the unqualified Whitaker in that position? No, but Trump is basically trying to de facto collapse NATO as an entity anyway. Not every fight can be fought to the hilt.
What I can tell you is I’ve seen friends and acquaintances that aren’t as obsessively engaged with politics, or who are progressives who would normally not be caught dead celebrating the often-centrist Booker, giving him plaudits and talking about renewed energy. The sense that it’s over and MAGA has won is precisely the sense that that political movement is trying to cultivate. Piercing it, even with vibes, is a pretty crucial part of the path forward.
