Cory Booker has big feelings again

An intra-Democratic Party feud erupted on the floor of the U.S. Senate Tuesday starring, of course, our state’s senior senator, Cory Booker.

Booker mixed it up with some of his fellow Democrats after he moved to derail passage of some bipartisan bills related to public safety and police. Booker said he wanted amendments to guarantee equal distribution of grant funding — a bid to keep President Trump from steering federal funds away from Dem-led states like ours.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) accused Booker — you’ll never believe this — of grandstanding for political reasons. Booker was nowhere to be found when the bills were advancing, noted Klobuchar, who, like Booker, may seek the White House in 2028.

“You can’t do one thing on ‘Police Week’ and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another a few weeks later in a big speech on the floor,” she said, adding that she likes “to show up.”

Booker — outraged, I tell you, outraged — rose to respond.

“I don’t need lectures about the urgency of this,” he said.

Booker said his party needs a “wake-up call,” echoing what he’s said in recent months as Trump has steamrolled over Democrats.

“I see universities that should be bastions of free speech bending at the knee to this president. I see businesses taking late-night talk show hosts off the air because they dare to insult a president. I see people who want mergers suddenly think that they have to pay tribute to this president. And what are the very people here, elected to defend the Constitution of the United States, saying? ‘Oh, well, today let’s look the other way,’” he said. “That is complicity with an authoritarian leader who is trashing our Constitution.”

No doubt some Democrats agree with Booker here. The idea that the party should counter Trump with unique ideas that would make Americans’ lives better has been largely replaced with an order to fight, though I’m not always clear what that means. Fight Trump in the courts? Democrats are doing that. Fight him on the campaign trail? They’re doing it there, too. Literally fight him in a boxing ring via AI avatars? Also done, and roundly mocked.

Booker on March 31 and April 1 won a lot of attention for making a similar but much, much longer speech about fighting Trump — then in May joined Republicans in confirming Trump’s ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, a Trump friend/in-law and a man responsible for some odious crimes here in New Jersey. Was that complicity with an authoritarian leader? Or is it only OK for Booker to play footsie with Trump?

Booker was still heated when he left the Senate floor Tuesday, telling reporters (per Max Cohen at Punchbowl News), “There’s a lot of us in this caucus that want to f***ing fight.” Fighting is great, senator. But are you winning anything but a higher personal profile? That’s a question to ask yourself as you spend August raising money in the Hamptons, Aspen, Santa Fe, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard.

I’ll add one thing. As Booker concluded his remarks, he said, “I’m standing for Jersey, I am standing for my police officers, I’m standing for the Constitution, and I’m standing for what’s right … When are we going to stand together for principles that I just heard that were agreed with? When are we going to stand together? If we don’t stand as Democrats, we deserve to lose. But if we stand united, if we stand strong, if we stand with other people, if we tell, with a chorus of conviction, ‘America, what the president is doing is wrong,’ — if we stand up and speak that way, dear God, we will win … I’m protecting Jersey today. I’m protecting our Constitution today. I’m standing today.”

Did you know Booker has a book coming out? It’s called “Stand.” Out in February from St. Martin’s Press. You can preorder now.