Cory Booker joins Chris Hayes to Discuss Voting Rights and Filibuster Reform

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey came out against it last March, saying, quote, for the sake of our vulnerable populations, for the sake of America doing big things again, the filibuster has to be reformed. He is a co-sponsor of the For the People Act, as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the two pieces of legislation that Biden advocated for today, and Senator Cory Booker joins me. Senator, your reaction to today and the speech today, and what kind of effect you think the president stepping into this has? Well, first and foremost, I think the president recognizes we're at a fundamentally inflection point in our democracy. You have this wave of voter suppression laws that are being passed now, really sourced by the big lie that somehow the election that Trump's own highest administrative sort of officials were saying was free and fair. Somehow we need to get these voting laws to fix something that's not broken. And really what they're doing is suppressing the votes of young people, Native Americans, minorities, disabled folks, and more. And so I think Joe Biden had to go out. I think he gave a tremendous, full-throated endorsement. And does it have an effect? Look, you know this as well as I do. This is a personality issue. This is about a lot of individual senators and the decisions that they're going to have to make. And I think in many ways, Joe Biden's a respected guy here in the Senate. This is where he came up from. So I'm hoping it makes a difference. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm not, look, everyone is trying the best they can on this and also build back better, right? You've got a very thin majority. You need all 50 votes to do anything, whether it's to change the rules to get the voting rights legislation or to pass Build Back Better. The math is the math. I'm not missing something, right? Like Sinema and Manchin say they won't vote to change the filibuster rules. And that is currently the position unless something changes. Well, an important distinction, Build Back Better, there's arguments over the base bill. We are talking about two voting bills that have 50 Democratic senators on board with them and senators saying, yeah, there are really problematic things with some of the laws that are being passed out there that will make it more difficult for some populations to vote. So we are all in agreement with that. The question now is, what do we do with the filibuster? And I think that's what really the grind of the conversations we've been having over these last weeks, many of which I've been in, about can we figure out, is it going to be a carve out? Is there a way to modify the rule? But the idea for most of us is this is the sacrosanct, most important right of a democracy, the voting of the people. When you came out, I mean, there has been progress on this or at least migration among Democratic senators. I mean, back when I was 12 years ago during the Obama administration, when I was covering U.S. senators, they tended to not want to change the filibuster. Part of the reason is it does give each individual senator more power. I mean, just in a sort of mathematical sense, like there's fewer of you that need to get together to block stuff. What was your migration? And it does seem like if you take a step back, there's been a lot of movement into the column of we need to do something here. Yeah, look, I'm going to be honest. I was one of these people that was really afraid. I saw Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump trifecta. If there was no filibuster, I can only imagine what they would have done. And I was very worried about the most vulnerable populations in America, really so many Americans, what they would have done on the fundamental right of a woman to control her body, for example. So I had a lot of those fears and a lot of those concerns. Now, I migrated quickly. One, the history of the filibuster, it's not a part of our history, it's not in the Constitution. This is something that really flared up and used to stop civil rights legislation, really to stop the rights of minorities. And the fact that the law has been changed, the filibuster rule, excuse me, has been changed in the 70s, in the 80s. It was changed in 2013. Mitch McConnell changed it to get Supreme Court justices there. And the other final thing that really pushed me was the fact of how many of the things we are not getting done in this body that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in. Take common sense background checks. Think Roe v. Wade, that somehow we are now in a nation where the things that we agree on aren't getting done. And voters, knowing that if we get that alignment again of McConnell, Ryan and Trump, they will be more aware that there's even more consequences if we don't engage. And so I've moved a long way, and I'm hoping, and I've loved to see the wisdom of some of my colleagues who've moved as well. Yeah, I mean, that was what was striking to me about watching Joe Biden give this speech today, right? This is a person who is very much a creature of the United States Senate, one of the longest serving senators we've had recently. And I think, you know, if you asked him very recently, I mean, he is someone who is very molded and adapted to those norms. It is striking to see him making this call from the lectern as the president towards his former body. Yeah, well, look, the filibuster in a long period, early 1900s to the 1970s, was used on average one time a year. It was a rarely invoked thing. It wasn't invoked in Supreme Court justices. It wasn't invoked for a lot of major pieces of legislation. It began to be abused, especially with Mitch McConnell, really taking the filibuster to a whole new level under Barack Obama. So to say that Joe Biden has changed, the real change you need to point to is the way the modern Republican Party picked up the filibuster and so abused it to the point now where many of us are saying this is ridiculous, we're stopping some fundamental progress in our country that the majority of people agree with. We need to revisit this filibuster. All right, Senator Cory Booker, it's been good to have you on tonight. Thanks a lot. It's great to be on. Thanks, man. And a Happy New Year to you.