Booker: Dem Senate Will ‘Balance Scales and Do Justice’ in Response to Barrett Confirmation

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that if Democrats win control of the Senate, they will “right wrongs, balance scales and do justice” in response to Republicans’ confirming Amy Coney Barrett as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hayes said, “I’ve been listening to a lot of your colleagues in the wake of that Amy Coney Barrett vote. And it seems to me that there’s — I don’t want to say radicalization, but there is a little scales falling from the eyes. Brian Schatz said you killed the old Senate. Whatever it was, it’s dead now. You killed it. We’ve got to make something new that’s better and works better. What happened in the last week that —what is going through everyone’s minds and hearts about what we’ve seen happen and what is ahead of us in this next week? ”

Booker said, “I joined this institution almost seven years ago to the day in a special election. And I have watched the erosion of norms accelerating from Mitch McConnell and the Merrick Garland incident to just tumbling downward from there. And the Senate is broken. It’s deeply wounded and injured. It’s not dead, but it is deeply wounded and injured. I think folks understand this is not something you can have in an earnest sort of naive way, this idea that if we just win back control of the Senate, things will get better. No. It’s going to take steps. I don’t know what they are going to be. We’re going to debate them hotly. But I think that the atmosphere in the Senate to taking steps to try to right wrongs, balance scales, and do justice. The number of mild-mannered senators now to break out their inner wolverine or whatever superhero nerd illusion I can make. I think you’re going to see a lot of people stepping up to try to figure out what we can do after a very dark period in which, not just in the Senate but our constitutional norms and traditions have been trashed. And what is worse than the person that actually trashed them in Donald Trump is the people that stood by and did nothing.”

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