Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
But… he hasn’t said anything we didn’t already know, and now that he’s done, it’s back to “business as usual.” So what exactly was gained?
When you have no power to enact change, you speak truth to the ones who do.
But most of this speech was to empty room. Nothing requires his opponents to listen to even be in the room to hear him.
Ah, did you think that the republicans would hear his speech and say “oh boy I didn’t realize we were enabling a pedo tyrant” and then move on?
If that’s your only measure of success, this would not do it.
Ask that to the person I’m replying to. They’re the one saying speaking to the people in power is what you do if you don’t have power. Which again, this did not do.
If you made that up, props to ya. Bad ass statement there.
It’s kind of a thing
He is a senator talking to other senators. And it isn’t like any of the republicans are going to change their mind based off what some rando from Oregon said. And it also isn’t like the news media is going to at all play any of that.
I want to say I like the sentiment and I think I do… if only from a “if we have to suffer, so will you”. But this is about as effective for change as a bunch of Democrats bopping their head to the soundtrack from Hamilton in solidarity.
Hell, if anything it adds fuel to the “Democrats are holding the government hostage” narrative because… they kinda were. It isn’t like the senate is going to vote on an amended bill any time soon but they actively can’t while this kind of stuff is going on.
Senators aren’t “randos”. Each state has two.
And those two account for 2% of the voting power in that room. And, to my knowledge, Merkley isn’t even a particular notable Democrat. With the Democrats making up 45% of the voting power in that room (with a couple DINOs like fetterman who dilute that even farther)
So he should have just sat down and shut up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
That doesn’t address the question. The senator could have done nothing, instead he he protested on the floor. Perhaps it was just performative and won’t change anything, but it was at least something. Would it have been better to do nothing?
Much like with being “apolitical”, doing nothing IS something.
Like I said. The actual act seems to have had no purpose to begin with other than MAYBE trolling or making photo ops. Anyone who would actually be paying attention to cspan or Rupar already knows we have an authoritarian government and anyone who doesn’t isn’t going to hear about this. And the audience was the US Senate republicans who ARE the problem.
In terms of impact? This wasn’t that dissimilar from MTG screaming shit from the back row while Biden spoke or boebert giving a thumbs down to the cameras. It doesn’t change minds and is just campaigning to your base. Which… I don’t know Oregon’s political tendencies off the top of my head so maybe that was the point. But it’s not going to change anything and is sure as hell not “speaking to power” or whatever that person wanted to pretend it was.
Now let’s look at repercussions. Because every action has a reaction. We have a government that shut down and a rapist actively destroying the White House during said shut down. We have a Senate that refuses to even consider an amended budget (in large part because there is zero chance the House will do so since it would involve triggering the Epstein files…). And what did we give the republicans in return?
And a complicit news media will just say “So you are denying that Senator Merkley spent 23 hours complaining about president trump during a shutdown?”.
To be clear: my inner troll still thinks this is funny and it can’t be THAT much worse than what is going on (see: complicit news media).
But before you and anyone else ever start to say “something is better than nothing, no matter how ineffective and arguably detrimental to our efforts”, let me leave you with
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4994572/hamilton-cast-members-sing-dear-theodosia-january-6th-anniversary
Was THAT at all a good idea? Are you going to defend fucking THAT?
I think we’ll just have to disagree on this one. I don’t think this was trolling and I don’t think this is anything like MTG and Boebert. The speech has brought media attention to this that has reached people that otherwise didn’t know it was happening. His message wasn’t something juvenile like those examples you mentioned but rather something serious. It probably won’t change the minds of anyone in powers, but even if it reaches a few people and moves them a little closer to changing their mind, then it was better than nothing. I don’t believe a second that it’s going to have the adverse effect of turning anyone off that already was never going to be swayed.
I didn’t know that this was happening until this morning when it was half way done. I found out through various articles. I’m sure I’m not the only person that saw that, and I can guarantee that others saw the headline that a Democrat gave a 23 hour speech and found something positive in that. Imo, that’s better than a headline that says no Democrats argued against the current regime. There was no musical number or childish gestures, but a legitimate speech. The delivery of the message is important and this was delivered professionally.
I would be elated if any of my reps did even the bare minimum to try and represent me.
I’m pretty sure he’d have yielded if they were going to vote on the bill, and it had a shot at passing.
You are applying logic and assuming an informed audience.
Rather than just “We wanted to vote but some asshole had to spend 23 hours talking about his trump derangement syndrome”
Do you think that the the other 99 senators are uninformed?
No moreso than most government officials.
But the senators barely matter in this. What matters is The American People who very much are.
Maybe you aren’t the audience. There’s a lot of people who actively try to avoid anything their brain identifies as politics.
Honestly, these peons just don’t have the refined palate it takes to enjoy such riviting antics.
I thought the rebuff was marvelous, it really showed that orange fiend putting Americans in camps what for!
No it isn’t. The government is shut down.
At the very least, we’re talking about what was said and that it happened. The message got to a wider audience than it would have if the statements were just inserted into the record.
Also, on the plus side, this was a senator saying this stuff in public for the entire world to hear, so others may be emboldened to speak these things in other places as established fact as well, instead of continuing to whisper it only behind closed doors.
Not sure why the original question was so heavily downvoted though, unless people thought the answer was painfully obvious. To me, the public record bit is important, but that could have been done elsewhere as well.