I am kind of too scared to ask here, but what did it actually achieve?
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Knocked Strom Thurmondâs racist ass filibuster of the civil rights act out of the #1 slot.
And that is absolutely all.
Is dethroning the 67-year-long record of some racistsâ rant not good enough for you?
Politics isnât sportsball, so no. Breaking arbitrary stats doesnât mean shit in terms of making material changes in the world, which is what politics is about.
And you are the arbiter of whatâs meaningful to someone else? Spout off about âsportsballâ all you want, but your lack of vision for what material change this might possibly inspire in others helps nobody. Someone, somewhere out there, is fired up over this, and theyâll enact more change than this dogwater attitude ever will.
It is not unreasonable to ask why he didnât use the filibuster to block actual legislation, instead of just I terupting procedure.
No, of course itâs not unreasonable to ask that, and I never implied that it is. It would have been incredible if he had chosen a more potent time. But thatâs not what is being said, nor was it what Iâm arguing against.
Itâs better than nothing. But thatâs all it achieved.
No, that certainly is not all it achieved. It created awareness and engagement. It shows someone still has a spine. It gives those racist fucks that much more to choke on while they flail around with their dying ideals. Have some imagination.
And why bother being so outwardly dismissive of something like this? What does that achieve? A few upvotes from a few fellow dispassionates? God damn it, no wonder those assholes still feel like they are winning.
they elected oz in the very next session; using a filibuster to prevent his confirmation is how you use a filibuster effectively.
How would that possibly have prevented his confirmation? It still went through after Bookerâs speech on a party-line vote, didnât it? What could Booker have said that would have shifted their opinion? What would you have said during a filibuster that would have any other effect on the party that was bound and determined to confirm him?
the same way thurmond did it; you secure the votes behinds the scenes and then throw a filibuster when itâs time to vote to turn up the pain; not when thereâs nothing on the table and no one around like booker did it.
Come on, do you truly think there was any chance theyâd be interested in shaking hands behind the scenes? These people bowed so low to their king that their pants split months ago. They canât even stand up straight at this point. Yet somehow, Iâm the idealist here.
They shook hands and unanimously approved (booker too) more weapons for the genocide immediately after the performance.
I guess Iâm just a little more cynical and youâre just a little more idealistic. If you review this thread, and the many other threads posted about this speech, in full youâll see Iâm not the only one who feels like this is bare minimum effort from Democrat leadership. Agree to disagree.
Best summation yet.
Letâs 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.
Think of it like a protest. Most protests donât DO anything, but he forced the entire senate to sit and listen to him for 25 hrs rant about how bad things have gotten. Iâm sure there was work and stuff they were supposed to vote on that he effectively delayed. But thatâs all it really was, a record breaking protest.
But it literally it was on the news for a day, thatâs it.
Protests go on for multi days and have a physical effect and achieve discomfort.
Meanwhile, I donât 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?
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. Itâs a powerful story, but ultimately itâs just a story.
Peaceful resistance does work, but there isnât a single event that achieves change. It has to be an accumulation.
Rosa Parkâs arrest didnât achieve anything âin terms of changeâ.
Ghandiâs protest fasts didnât achieve anything âin terms of changeâ.
When the Baltics had their singing revolutions, there wasnât a single performance that achieved anything âin terms of changeâ.
All these were parts of larger efforts of peaceful resistance that culminated in change.
What did Cory Bookerâs speech achieve? Itâs too early to say. Itâs possible it will be part of an accumulation that culminates in measurable results. On the other hand, itâs possible cynicism will poison the resistance and it will achieve nothing. Weâll only know once the history is written.
This is essentially what I was going to say (though more poetic).
Iâm of two minds. I admit that i cringe a bit that he would even call this âgood troubleâ. John Lewisâ âgood troubleâ was nearly getting beaten to death. How Booker can apply such a label to an act of protest that didnât 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.
Iâll 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 wouldâve made me far less likely to expect it. Good for him.
Itâs political momentum. Same thing bernie and AOC are doing. None of them have changed anything yet, itâs just getting attention and support for future acts
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 wasnât 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 arenât 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 âoppositionâ 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!
Absolutely nothing. Itâs 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.
Bookerâs speech was an audition for Schumerâs 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.
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 âgood troubleâ I personally found a spark of hope and Iâm a real cynic tbh
It got people to talk about it and take interest in what is going on. There are undoubtedly some portion of the population that are fully oblivious of the world around them, or just indifferent at least, but someone going on for that long has to make them wonder why he would do that.
Senators (in the US) are elected representatives of their state. Sen. Booker, through his 25 hour speech, brought his constituentsâ message to the forefront, criticized the Senate, Democratsâ and his own failures to act. He got millions of people to look at Senate business as if he was a professional streamer which is usually boring stuff. The speech is Bookerâs answer to âwhat can I do at this moment to make a difference?â, which hopefully will get others to ask the same of themselves.
Itâs impossible to measure the true impact of the speech afterward, but itâs intended to inspire people to take action, resist the Trump monarchy, and cause âgood troubleâ where they can. Who knows whether this has had any influence on the Wisconsin Supreme Court which was a humiliation to Musk, or if it had any influence on the 4 Republican Senators joining Democrats to pass a resolution nullifying the false emergency against Canada?
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 didnât 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.
Itâs not that the votes on that specific bill werenât there. Itâs just that under the leadership of Sen Richard Russel of Georgia (who the âRussel Senate Office Buildingâ 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 couldnât afford to let that happen.
So they organized, filibustered key bills, set up âwatchesâ 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 werenât 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 arenât doing that. But they could. And by generating headlines by filibustering, he encourages other senators to do so, if only for popularity.
Nothing but it made Democeats feel like it did something and that is all that matters.
It set a new record. Thatâs about it
At least itâs not Strom Thurmand mad about the civil rights act with the longest speaking time record anymoreâŚ
Oh my fucking god. Everyone suggesting he only did this to raise his profile for a presidential run has got to be feeling pretty silly about their lack of cynicism right now. I know I do.
my cynicism never fails me
Raised his national profile. If he keeps up political theater like this for the next 3 yearâs heâll have a good shot at the Democratic nomination.