Cory Booker: Kavanaugh Confirmation Process ‘Perverse’

Tuesday at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court associate justice, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) called the process “perverse.”

Booker said, “It seems so clear that in your courts the same folks seem to win over and over again, the powerful, the privileged, big corporations, special interests, and over and over again. The folks that lose are who I came to Washington to fight for, working folks, consumers, women, immigrants, minorities, the disadvantaged, the poor. This is, the challenge before us, this is why so much is at stake. I love that my colleagues keep going back to the Constitution. But understand this, I laud our founders, I think they were geniuses, but you got to understand that there are millions of American who understand that they were also flawed people. We’re the oldest Constitutional democracy. We’re the oldest one. We were founded in a break with human events, you know this, judge, I’ve read your writings. We are not founded on some kind of tribalism, as much as we think it’s breaking out in our country. We weren’t founded because we all look alike, or we all pray alike. We are not a monarchy or a theocracy. We broke with the course of human events and formed this nation, God bless America, God bless our founders, but we know our founders and their values and their ideals. We know that they, that they were flawed and can you see that in the documents. Native Americans were referred to as savages. Women weren’t referred to as all. African-Americans, black slaves, were referred to as fractions of human beings.”

After discussing Brown v. Board of Education, Booker continued, “Now the fear and the worry is, where the trend of the court is doing, is rolling back those gains, is undermining that progress, is restricting individual rights as the rise of corporations, the rise of dark money, the rise to the interests of the powerful and the privileged and the elite. So I just say in conclusion, sir, I said this to you in a heart-to-heart moment in the last seconds that you came to my office to meet with me, one-on-one which I appreciated. I pointed to the map behind my desk, the central ward of Newark, New Jersey. A place with mighty people. It’s a low-income community. People still struggling for the fullness and the richness of the promises of America. That’s the concern that I have right now. That is what is at stake. So I say in conclusion, sir, this to me, is a profound and historical moment. I cannot support your nomination, not just because of the body of your work, because also the perverse process by which this comes forward. We should not vote now. We should wait. And if we’re not waiting, we should object to your nomination.”

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