'We have so much pain': Cory Booker makes 2020 Iowa debut
DES MOINES Hours after casting his vote against confirming Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was looking out at Iowa Democrats, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and urging them not to give into despair.
I heard a president mock and laugh and jeer a survivor for telling her story, Booker said. I know theres a lot of folks hurting right now. When I was walking through here, I had survivors walking up to me, telling me what the fight meant to them.
Bookers Iowa visit, the first by a Democrat considered a top-tier presidential candidate in 2020, was rapturously received by activists who had lost nearly every office in their state. The New Jersey senator had quietly agreed to keynote the partys gala eight months earlier, shortly after joining the Senate Judiciary Committee; he planned to stay in the state through Tuesday, as Democrats kicked off their 30-day early-voting period.
His speech, delivered to about 1,400 Democrats at an event designed to stoke presidential speculation, dealt with the anguish over Kavanaughs confirmation with a digression into Bookers personal story a suburban kid who became an organizer and later mayor in Newark and stories about his Iowa relatives, who had made friendships across racial lines, folks coming together with their cloth to do a quilting bee.
Booker compared the anger many were feeling about Kavanaughs confirmation to what he had felt watching a young man die of a gunshot wound, and then the despair hed felt at President Trumps inauguration.
Hope is the act of conviction that despair can never have the last word, he said. Were not defined in this state by Republicans in power; were defined by how we respond to them. Were not defined by a president who mocks a hero, Dr. [Christine] Blasey Ford. Were not defined by a president who doesnt believe women.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/07/we-have-so-much-pain-cory-booker-makes-iowa-debut/?utm_term=.c9857a96be94
Run, Cory, run...