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I need y’all to hear me on this one.

I don’t say things to be provocative. I say things because the data demands it. Right now, Senator Cory Booker is out here on a nationwide book tour, sitting on Meet the Press telling Kristen Welker he’s “definitely not ruling out” a presidential run in 2028. I’m not here to bash him and yes we disagree on alot, however I hope this video and piece written by me is something he and his team can sit on. Process and digest.

Let’s start where everybody wants to start. The speech.

On March 31, 2025, Cory Booker took to the Senate floor and spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sit. He didn’t use the restroom. His staff removed his chair so he wouldn’t be tempted to sit down. And when he was done, Democrats gave him a standing ovation, Chuck Schumer shed a tear, and the internet lost its collective mind. It was a cool moment, though I remained critical. He broke the record previously held by Strom Thurmond—the segregationist senator from South Carolina who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes trying to stop Black people like Booker from ever sitting in the United States Senate.

Now, the symbolism of a Black senator breaking the record of a white supremacist senator? I see the power in that. I’m not going to negate the historical symbolism of what he did. On my PawPaw grave here’s where I need y’all to think deeper than the optics.

What did the speech actually accomplish?

Zero bills passed. Zero votes stopped. Zero policy changes. Let me say that again for the people in the back who confuse applause with legislation: zero.

Stated simply, Conscious Lee will not substitute my cultural pride for political accountability. Yes we can celebrate that cultural moment in history while also not separating it from political accountability and critique. As a Public Educater and Edutaining Content Creator, I’m critiqued best in this very framework nonetheless I’m no policy maker.

See, I know political theater when I see it. And just like Strom Thurmond’s historical act didn’t stop the Civil Rights Act from passing the very next day by a vote of 60–15, Booker’s speech didn’t stop a single thing either. Matthew Whitaker—a man with no significant foreign policy experience who served briefly as Trump’s acting attorney general—was confirmed as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO by a vote of 52–45 the same evening Booker stopped talking. The Senate literally waited for him to sit down and then proceeded with business as usual. Feel me?

Pay attention and read closely. Here’s what nobody wants to talk about. What Booker did after the speech.

The Receipts

Receipt number one.

The very next month after his marathon performance, Booker voted to confirm David Perdue—Trump’s pick for U.S. Ambassador to China—joining 15 other Democrats in handing Trump a 67–29 victory. This is during an active trade war that Trump started with his reckless 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. You just stood on your feet for 25 hours telling America how dangerous this administration is, and then you handed them a confirmation vote on a critical diplomatic post in the middle of an economic confrontation? Make that make sense.

Receipt number two.

In May 2025, Cory Booker was the only Democrat—the only one—to vote to confirm Charles Kushner as the United States Ambassador to France. Who is Charles Kushner? He’s Jared Kushner’s father, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, a convicted felon who pled guilty to tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and—this is the part that should disqualify any senator’s vote—witness tampering. The man hired a sex worker to seduce his own brother-in-law, had it filmed, and sent the tape to his sister as retaliation for cooperating with federal investigators. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Trump pardoned him in 2020. And Cory Booker—Mr. 25-Hour Moral Stand—was the lone Democrat to say, “Yeah, that’s fine with me.”

Why? According to the New Jersey Globe, Booker and Kushner have a relationship going back decades. Charles Kushner provided financial support for Booker’s first mayoral run in Newark back in 2002. So when the moment came to choose between principle and patronage, Booker chose patronage. Every single time.

Receipt number three.

Booker himself stood on the Senate floor later in 2025 and said—and I’m paraphrasing here—”This is a problem with Democrats in America right now. We’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump. We are standing at a moment where our president is eviscerating the Constitution, and we’re willing to go along with it.” He said that. On the record. About his own party. But Senator, you are the party. You are the complicity you’re describing. Because when the votes came, you went along with it too.

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The Historical Context You Need

Let me give you the history that most people won’t, because this pattern didn’t start with Booker.

Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster is instructive not because of its length but because of its futility and its function. Thurmond stood for 24 hours and 18 minutes reading state election laws, the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington’s Farewell Address—not because he believed he could stop the Civil Rights Act, but because the performance of resistance served his political brand. Even his fellow Southern Democrats—men like Richard Russell and Herman Talmadge, committed segregationists—were furious with Thurmond. Russell called it “personal political aggrandizement.” Talmadge called it grandstanding. They had agreed as a caucus not to filibuster the bill, and Thurmond broke ranks for the spectacle. The bill passed the next day.

Now I’m not drawing a moral equivalence between Thurmond’s cause and Booker’s. Thurmond was fighting to stop Black people from voting. Booker was ostensibly fighting to protect democratic institutions. But the structural function of both speeches is identical: a marathon performance that stopped nothing, changed nothing, and primarily elevated the speaker’s national profile. Thurmond used his filibuster to become a national figure in Southern politics. Booker used his speech to launch a book tour and fuel 2028 presidential speculation. The pattern is the pattern.

And this is where the deeper history gets uncomfortable. The Democratic Party has a long tradition of what I call performative resistance—gestures designed to signal opposition without actually disrupting the machinery of power. When Hakeem Jeffries and Booker sat on those stairs together for their viral moment, I said at the time: that’s what me and my content creator friends do. We sit down and have conversations and hope they reverberate through the culture because we don’t have levers of power. But Booker does. He’s a United States Senator. He has committee assignments, voting power, the ability to place holds on nominations, and the procedural tools to actually obstruct. He chose the performance instead.

This is the difference between Frederick Douglass and the Black faces in high places that Malcolm X warned us about. Douglass didn’t just speak—he organized, he built institutions, he demanded structural change. Malcolm drew the distinction clearly: there’s a difference between the house Negro and the field Negro, between the entertainer and the leader. The entertainer performs resistance. The leader produces it. And if we’re being honest—facts over feelings—Booker’s record is that of a performer, not a producer.

He’s Voted Nice Before—But This Moment Demands More

Now, let me be fair. I want to be fair because that’s what we do at Education is Elevation. We don’t deal in caricature. We deal in complexity. We leave the pathology and antiblack tropes for them other folks.

Cory Booker has cast votes I respect. He was the first senator in history to testify against a fellow senator during Jeff Sessions’ 2017 attorney general confirmation hearing. He co-sponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2013. He has spoken powerfully about criminal justice reform, and he’s introduced legislation around environmental justice that reflects genuine concern for marginalized communities. He showed moral courage during the Kavanaugh hearings. I see that. I acknowledge that.

In Bryan, Texas we have the saying about “dry ass hating” which means exactly how it sounds. I’m not dry ass hating.

But here’s what I need the culture, my neighbors and kinfolks to understand: a voting record built in calmer waters does not predict performance in a storm. How that pipe functions when’s its easy flow will not tell negate how pressure bust pipes. Bro is just not piped up to be President. And right now, we are in a Category 5 hurricane. We have an administration that has, by Booker’s own admission on the Senate floor, “inflicted harm after harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the foundations of our democracy.” We have DOGE dismantling federal agencies. We have ICE operating with expanded impunity. We have tariff wars destabilizing working families. We have an assault on public education, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security happening in real time.

And in this climate… this specific, unprecedented, constitutional crisis climate—Cory Booker has shown us who he is. He speaks for 25 hours and then votes to confirm the nominees of the very administration he just railed against. He writes a book called Stand while sitting down on the votes that matter. He talks about being part of “a new generation of leadership” while practicing the oldest form of political careerism there is: building a brand on the backs of people’s pain without delivering material results.

The current moment doesn’t need someone who can rise to a podium. It needs someone who can rise to the moment. And Cory Booker, based on his own record, has illustrated that he cannot rise to the moment for the American people—only for himself.

The “I Am Spartacus” Problem

Remember the Kavanaugh hearings? Booker had his dramatic “I am Spartacus” moment where he claimed to be risking expulsion from the Senate by releasing confidential documents. The White House had actually already cleared those documents for release. It was theater. Effective theater, maybe—but theater. And the White House knew it then, which is exactly why their spokesperson responded to the 25-hour speech by saying Booker was “looking for another ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.”

When your opponents can predict your playbook because your playbook is always the same—performative resistance followed by institutional compliance—you are not a threat to power. You are a relief valve for it. You give people the emotional catharsis of resistance without the material consequences of it. And that is not leadership. That is content creation with a Senate salary.

What His Own State Is Saying

Let me bring this home. New Jersey—Booker’s own state—shifted significantly toward Republicans in 2024. Kamala Harris won the state by less than six points after Biden won it by sixteen. Booker’s approval ratings have been a subject of concern among New Jersey Democrats for years. His 2026 reelection is not the guaranteed victory it once would have been. And according to my New Jersey sources and multiple reports, there is genuine frustration among constituents who feel that Booker has prioritized national ambitions over the needs of the state that elected him.

This is a man who has raised $10 million—with a major fundraising bump directly after the 25-hour speech—for a campaign account and affiliated joint fundraising committee. He released a book the same month he went on Meet the Press to not rule out a presidential run. The timeline isn’t subtle, y’all. The speech was the launch pad. The book is the campaign literature. And the presidential campaign is the destination that every single one of these moves has been designed to reach.

The question isn’t whether Cory Booker wants to be president. He’s told us he does. The question is whether his record justifies that ambition. And based on the receipts—zero bills passed, confirmation votes for Trump nominees including a convicted felon, a speech that stopped nothing, and a book tour that started immediately after—the answer is no.

The Standard We Should Demand

I want to have a respectful conversation about this. I hope this article has showcased that I have the ability to be respectful and analytical while still being direct. I’m not here to assassinate anyone’s character. I’m here to evaluate a public servant’s record against their stated ambitions.

Because if we’re serious about 2028—if we’re serious about building a Democratic Party that can actually defeat Trumpism and not just perform opposition to it—then we need candidates whose records match their rhetoric. We need leaders who don’t vote to confirm convicted felons to ambassadorial posts because of two-decade-old political debts. We need senators who understand that a 25-hour speech means nothing if you hand the opposition a confirmation vote 24 hours later.

Thinking deeply about shallow s**t is what we do here. And the shallow s**t in this case is the 25-hour speech. It looks deep. It feels powerful. It moved people to tears. But when you dig beneath the surface—when you pull the receipts and lay the voting record next to the rhetoric—what you find is a politician who is exceptionally skilled at performing the aesthetics of resistance while maintaining the practice of compliance.

That’s not a president. That’s a brand.

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5 KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The 25-hour speech produced zero legislative results. No bills passed. No votes stopped. Matthew Whitaker was confirmed as NATO Ambassador the same evening Booker stopped speaking. The speech was a physical feat, not a legislative one.

2. Booker’s voting record contradicts his rhetoric. After publicly opposing the Trump administration for 25 hours, Booker voted to confirm David Perdue as Ambassador to China and was the sole Democrat to confirm convicted felon Charles Kushner as Ambassador to France—a man who financially supported Booker’s first campaign.

3. The historical pattern of marathon Senate speeches is clear. From Thurmond in 1957 to Cruz in 2013 to Booker in 2025, lengthy Senate speeches have almost never changed legislative outcomes. They change narratives and build personal brands. Thurmond’s own allies called his filibuster “personal political aggrandizement”—a criticism that applies equally today.

4. Booker’s post-speech trajectory reveals his priorities. A book release, a national tour, $10 million in fundraising, and a public refusal to rule out a 2028 presidential run all followed the speech. The speech was a launchpad for personal ambition, not a catalyst for collective action.

5. The current moment demands legislators who produce results, not performances. With DOGE dismantling agencies, tariff wars destabilizing the economy, and constitutional norms under unprecedented assault, the Democratic Party needs leaders whose voting records match their stated opposition—not senators who speak for 25 hours and then hand the administration confirmation votes.

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I’m fighting to fill a critical void left by the retreat of public education media. I document and teach the histories, legal frameworks, and cultural knowledge that are being systematically erased or distorted. With no corporate backing or wealthy sponsors, this work depends entirely on readers like you. As a Black educator and researcher my work depends entirely on a community of readers, not corporate sponsors. If everyone reading this became a paid subscriber, we could build a full-time digital sanctuary: a new, independent source of PBS-depth reporting and curriculum, centered on Black expertise. But right now, less than 1% of my followers are paid subscribers.

The article you just read—pulling Senate voting records, historical analysis of the filibuster tradition from Thurmond to Booker, cross-referencing confirmation votes with public statements, and contextualizing all of it within the history of performative resistance in American politics—this is the kind of independent, receipts-based on investigative education that doesn’t exist on cable news. They’ll show you the 25-hour speech. They’ll let Booker promote his book unchallenged. They won’t pull the Kushner vote, the Perdue confirmation, or the Whitaker timeline and lay it all out for you in one place. That’s what your paid subscription makes possible. That’s what Education is Elevation is building. If this work matters to you, become a paid subscriber today. We’re building the media we deserve—together.

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