Mirrored /r/50501 Popular Posts
Can someone explain the Cory Booker thing? Why is this significant? What did he do other than just talk for a record amount of time? Why was this important?
Edit - btw whoever downvoted me for asking a legit question, what a jagoff. I didn’t know what was going on with this and was politely trying to ask. Who downvotes someone for trying to learn. What a douchebag
Cory Booker's thing from my understanding is largely symbolic. I'm not an expert or anything but the biggest part is that the record is no longer held by a racist, Strom Thurmond. Strom had previously set the record opposing civil rights. From an optics point of view, it's good to not have Strom holding the record any longer.
The other part is that Cory was doing something of more substance than what the Democrats have recently been doing. The extent of previous Democrat action was absolutely nothing or holding up a piece of paper.
There wasn't an active vote happening during this, but it stopped any new business from starting, which is probably good. Maybe this will encourage the rest to speak in opposition rather than doing absolutely nothing.
Ah makes way more sense now. Thank you for taking the time to write that all out. I had no idea this was even a thing. Glad to see someone made a historic gesture towards inclusion.
No problem. Happy to help.
As I understand it, debate on an issue can be terminated by a 3/5 majority vote (cloture). By positioning the speech away from any specific bill, it also side stepped the possibility of it being terminated by cloture.