Cory Booker’s Filibuster Was A Pyrrhic ‘West Wing’ Victory

By Jason Tabrys | April 14, 2025 | 11:37am

Photo by CSPAN Screenshot

Congress Cory Booker

Cory Booker’s Filibuster Was A Pyrrhic ‘West Wing’ Victory

Everything I thought I knew about the rules governing standing fillibusters I learned from watching the season 2 West Wing episode, “The Stackhouse Filibuster.” This was prior to Cory Booker’s recent record breaking 25-hour point-by-point read on the misadventures of Donald John Trump, rights and reason-averse robber baron and Musk muck fuppet.

I used to think I learned a lot about politics from watching The West Wing at a young age. It helped inspire my early idealism. But nearly all those lessons have been made worthless by the bubbling tar pit of the last 20-plus years, with the Swiftboating of John Kerry and the rise of birtherism standing as key indicators that the show’s world was a mirage.

Most Popular

On The West Wing, arguments were usually born from ideological incompatibility, not presented as a part of a holy war. The Bartlett administration’s enemies bit their tongues when confronted by an erudite burn and often retreated when they were wrong. Here in the real world, Trump mocks a member of a political rival’s family getting hit in the head with a hammer, tries to brightside the Holocaust, and drags everyone down into the mud to lower the burden of proof for his wild claims and conspiracies. The Trump administration does not accept blame, they only assign it.

The memory of my fanboy past and my present skepticism are why I narrow my eyes and tilt my head when people count Booker’s speech (yes, not technically a filibuster) as some kind of sea-changing moment or victory for Democrats – because that’s some West Wing bullshit right there.

I will admit Booker deserves respect for becoming the non-Trumpworld main character for multiple news cycles in our “8-ball and a Redbull” media climate. Despite all that has happened since – with a millions-strong nationwide protest (George Soros, you outdid yourself this time, dawg) and Trump aiming a lit fart at people’s highly flammable 401Ks – the speech is still in the limelight with Booker appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The View last Monday. That’s a long tail of interest for 2025 and it’s partly due to Booker’s undeniable personal brand-elevation game.

Booker first entered the spotlight as the subject of the 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary (Street Fight) about his longshot campaign for Mayor of Newark against the entrenched power of Sharpe James. It’s great, you should find it wherever they hide 20-year-old documentaries.

By 2013, Booker was a US Senator from New Jersey. By 2019, he had entered the primary for the Democratic nomination for President and had a relationship with actress Rosario Dawson. Neither campaign went the distance.

Booker has written two books – one about finding common ground and another on the evaporating American Dream. He has been on everything from The Daily Show to Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, an episode of Sesame Street, as well as an episode of Parks And Rec.

Clearly, Booker is a little thirsty for that spotlight. But to his credit, he has stayed on message about the chaos of the Trump administration on this little media tour while most people just want to talk about how he held his piss in for 25 hours and vanquished a record held by the last surviving Confederate soldier, Strom Thurmond.

The contrast between Booker and Democrats who are busy capitulating and waiting for someone else to speak up is clear. That contrast was a big part of Charlamagne Tha God’s commentary on the speech in a Daily Show segment titled, “Cory Booker’s Marathon Filibuster Is the Energy Charlamagne Wants to See From Dems.” Charlamagne then ran through the meager ranks of other Democrat “stars” like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, and California Governor Gavin Newsome – a centrist, an institutionalist, and a narcissist trying to brand build off a podcast where he has playdates with right-wing shitstirrers.

While I agree with a lot of what he said (especially spotlighting Jasmine Crockett’s unrelenting clapbacks at the right), that title (dropped before the protests) about the filibuster bringing “the energy” Democrats need feels too close to West Wing thinking. It’s a level of reverence for the filibuster that supposes that we’ve all been waiting for an amazing, crystal-clear speech to wake us all up. (And if that West Wing trope wasn’t the most coked-out writer-coded shit, I don’t know what is.)

Also, in hindsight, The West Wing wasn’t always crystal clear, just saccharine sweet while putting heartful caps on its liberal fairytales.

In “The Stackhouse Fillibuster,” the Bartlett team goes from annoyed to allied with Stackhouse and the Senator wins out, delaying the passage of a child healthcare bill long enough to include funding for autism research. The episode closes just after Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) says in a letter to her father, “if politics brings out the worst in people, maybe people bring out the best.” I do not know what that line means, but I bet it sounded AMAZING to me when I was a little teenage West Wing freak.

The Democratic party of 2025 still has one foot in the fantasyland of The West Wing at the turn of the century, so I bet that line would feel right at home in the speech of an establishment Democrat like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and, sadly, Cory Booker. It’s got every ingredient. A dash of fear, anger, and wistfulness (politics DOES bring out the worst in people) and a sprinkle of hope (but people might just be able to bring out the BEST in people if we all wish upon a star). I think the 2025 version of this is something about how this is all not who we are and how we’re better than this. Something… nothing.

Put this way, a sentiment like that is as consequential in the midst of the outright death-spiral of norms and order as a really long speech that nobody can quote. And that’s especially true when actions like the peaceful Hands-Off protests and Senators blocking Trump appointees or otherwise taking from the GOP obstructionist playbook feel more like the kind of energy Democrats really need.