Political Quotes

“I rise to say in public today what I have been discussing with many individual Nebraskans over the last 17 days about the ``me too.'' movement, the important ``me too.'' movement, about a nation that is accelerating our descent into tribalism and about our continuing decline here in the Senate as a deliberative body--or as a Nebraska woman put it a little more bluntly to me 2 nights ago: What the hell is happening in my country? One part of the answer to her urgent question is that the Senate is being swallowed whole by 24/7 cable news, and that inclination--that temptation--probably just can't be reconciled with being a great deliberative body. Doing reality TV and wrestling with big, hard, complicated, long-term problems are just fundamentally different things. I am not here tonight to talk about the Supreme Court confirmation votes that we will probably be taking this weekend. I am here to talk about the nasty process we have been navigating over the past 86 days and about the false choices some people are claiming stand before us and about where we in the Senate will go next week, next month, and next year after that vote. I am not here to talk about how fundamentally broken the Senate Judiciary Committee is or how absurd it is to think that the problems in our committee structures are going to be solved by preening and grandstanding Senators looking for sound bites, although both of those things are obviously true.…”