I’m watching the Booker filibuster. On the AP video feed on YouTube, 20K people are watching and he’s yielding for “questions” from colleagues (Mark Warner is asking a very long-winded one as I write this). So other Senators are supporting him, especially Chris Murphy who’s been tag teaming with him.
I’ve mentioned “Senate Gabe” on BlueSky before — he’s a former Senate staffer who has a strong view that Democrats in the Senate could be obstructing with far more energy. Here’s his guide to Senate obstruction. (You need to be logged in to view it.) It boils down to mainly denying unanimous consent to slow down the Senate.
So, Gabe’s argument is that what Booker is doing — gumming up the works to get attention — could be done daily with less effort by any single Senator. After watching some of these guys, including Chris Murphy, talk about how terrible everything is but not denying unanimous consent, I think the reason they don’t is that it would fracture their relationship with Senate leadership.
That all said, I don’t agree with some of the “well, actually” stuff on BlueSky about Booker’s action. He’s getting attention. Good. More of this, please.
