Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is starting to sound a bit like Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., these days.
The New Jersey senator encouraged attendees at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness this week to be more proactive in their political advocacy. And by proactive, he means political activists should get up close and personal with certain members of Congress.
“Before I end,” he said Wednesday during an address that included a plea for meaningful and sustained political engagement, “that’s my call to action here. Please don’t just come here today and then go home. Go to the Hill today. Get up and please get up in the face of some congresspeople.”
Kind of a weird concluding message for a conference about homelessness, but okay.
Though the senator’s advice is pretty mild (all things considered), it reminds me anyway of the moment last month when Waters encouraged supporters at a rally in California to target and harass members of the Trump White House.
“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said in June.
Honestly, I’m not so sure I care for the current version of the New Jersey senator. I liked him better when he focused mostly on telling painfully earnest stories about coming together or whatever.
I’m not sure I care for the Booker who claimed this week that anyone who votes for to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is “complicit in evil.”
“I’m here to call on folks to understand that in a moral moment, there is no ‘neutral.’ In a moral moment, there is no ‘bystanders,'” Booker said Tuesday during an address on Capitol Hill. “You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.”
Booker added in reference to Psalm 23, “Yea, though we [sic] walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
“I am calling on everyone right now who understands what’s at stake, who understands who Kavanaugh is,” he said. “If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. He has shown us who he is.”
I liked Booker better when he stuck to telling uplifting, and totally fabricated, feel-good stories about his humble New Jersey roots. The updated, hyper-partisan version of the senator is a bit of a drag.
