Senator Cory Booker wants Democrats on Capitol Hill to fight harder against President Donald Trump. And accomplish what, exactly?
During a fiery tirade on the Senate floor, the New Jersey Democrat last week accused his own party of being “complicit” in Trump’s ongoing series of constitutionally questionable power grabs — including withholding congressionally mandated funding; gutting federal agencies created via congressional statute; and using the government to intimidate private industry and universities.
“When will we stand and fight this president?” Booker asked, in remarks directed toward his bewildered Democratic colleagues.
The former Newark mayor was just getting started. “The problem with Democrats in America right now, is we’re willing to be complicit to Donald Trump … when we have all the leverage,” Booker, 56, said a few minutes later. Plus: “The Democratic Party needs a wake-up call … It’s time for Democrats to have a backbone, it’s time for us to fight.”
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For frustrated Democratic voters, Booker’s comments are probably cathartic. There’s a reason these voters think so little of their party, contributing to its historically low approval ratings.
Only leverage left
Except that Booker’s diatribe was misleading. The Democratic Party doesn’t occupy the White House and controls a minority of seats in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Conservatives enjoy a 6–3 supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court. The only leverage available to Democrats in Washington is the Senate filibuster, a product of chamber rules (not the Constitution) that requires most — but not all — bills to garner the support of 60 senators to pass.
So, Booker might be right that Democrats lack backbone. But that doesn’t change the fact that Democrats don’t have the numbers in Congress, or the highest court in the land, to stop Trump from stretching the bounds of executive authority.
“You have tons of internet (and) social media voices screaming that if Democrats would only fight, they’d achieve A, B, or C. Those people either don’t understand how Congress works, can’t count, or are opportunists misleading people,” Brian Rosenwald, a scholar in residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. “Yet, it shapes the base’s expectations to think that Democrats can achieve more than is possible.”
Beyond the politically titillating nature of Booker’s criticism of his own party, his speech attracted attention because it sparked a real-time public debate with fellow Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
The backdrop to all of this was a package of bipartisan bills aimed at bolstering local law enforcement. Booker was already on record supporting the legislation, and Klobuchar and Cortez Masto were on the floor pushing for passage. Both sharply rebuked Booker. Their argument, essentially, was that Democrats should govern where common ground with Republicans was possible to avoid penalizing their constituents for Trump’s sins.
“I have been equally vociferous in taking on this administration. But all of these bills came out of the (Senate Judiciary) Committee unanimously and I think they deserve that support on the floor,” Klobuchar responded. (She listed the package’s benefits, including funding for mental health services for law enforcement; combating sexual exploitation; boosting police recruitment; and aiding families of officers killed in the line of duty.) Ultimately, Booker dropped his procedural objection and the bills passed.
Now, Booker does have one point. The Trump administration is withholding congressionally mandated funds, rendering the legislative branch’s Article 1 powers meaningless.
“Democrats and Republicans used to stand up for their turf,” Booker said in defense of his initial objection. In other words, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle used to jealously guard the prerogatives of the legislative branch — the supreme branch, according to the Constitution — against overzealous presidents. And they used to do so even when their party held the presidency.
The erosion of congressional power is an unfortunate development that predates Trump.
Booker is hardly the first senator to complain that his powerless party had the power to stop the opposition party’s president, if only it had the will to fight. In 2013, I was a Capitol Hill reporter and witnessed Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas deliver an old-fashioned talking filibuster that lasted 21-plus hours — not unlike the record-long Senate floor speech Booker belted out this past spring. And like Booker’s lament that his party has (supposedly) rolled over for Trump, Cruz back then jabbed at Republicans for insufficiently standing up to President Barack Obama.
Cruz wanted to bring Congress to a standstill by engineering a government shutdown in a bid to defund Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act. But Republicans did not have the power to follow through, despite controlling the House of Representatives — more than Democrats have going for them today.
False impression
But Cruz’s quixotic effort did succeed in a couple of ways.
It gave grassroots Republicans the false impression that the GOP could achieve more, legislatively, than was possible through sheer fortitude. It also turned Cruz into a leading 2016 presidential contender, propelling him to victory in the Iowa caucuses. Perhaps Booker, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, is a student of recent history.
Nothing wrong with Booker casting an eye toward 2028, but it might behoove Democratic voters to stay focused on the next election — 2026. Impeding Trump’s agenda requires capturing at least one house of Congress. Doing so would give Democrats some actual — versus imagined — leverage, empowering them to achieve more than emotional catharsis.
David M. Drucker is columnist covering politics and policy. ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.