Cory Booker: “Thank you, Madam President, my colleague from Iowa. I am grateful. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the…”

“Thank you, Madam President, my colleague from Iowa. I am grateful. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. I rise in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of an election process in which over 50 million Americans have already voted, to speak with a simple call that we should wait. We should not be doing this as a body. Now, that is not a radical statement. It is a statement that has been said by pretty much every Member of the Democratic side, but it is also a statement that was made by many people in the Republican Party before we got to this juncture. It was said around the time that Merrick Garland was up for nomination by President Barack Obama 269 days before an election, and people said that we were in an election season; that we should wait. But this is not a typical election season. This is an election that is going on where the people are coming out to speak on an array of issues. There is a profound urgency in the air--not a partisan urgency. America has seen record turnout because they know what is at stake in this election. There are issues that are driving people to the polls, and in this context, our President is doing what has never been done before. The only time this had a chance to be done before was when Abraham Lincoln had a vacancy on the Supreme Court in the midst of an election--this close to an election. Abraham Lincoln--one of our greatest Presidents of all time--made a powerful choice.…”