Liberation Day comes in many hues.
As US president Donald Trump prepares to issue his general proclamation of a tariff-driven new golden age for America from the fabled Rose Garden of the White House on Wednesday, the vanquished Democratic Party discovered a glimmer of hope after what has been, for them, a relentlessly dark winter.
It presented itself in the old fashioned guises of an election and a Senate speech.
Shortly after 10pm on Tuesday, Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate for the vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat, comfortably won an election after a vote that was interpreted as a repudiation of the eye-catching intervention of Elon Musk.
The billionaire had, in recent weeks, contributed breathtaking sums and held a Madison town hall meeting in the state in support of the Republican candidate, Brad Schimel.
Shortly after 9pm, Schimel called Crawford to concede.
“I want to thank him. He was very gracious,” Crawford said in her victory speech, which was preoccupied by Musk’s parachuting into a campaign she had embarked on some 10 months ago.
“But I gotta tell ya. As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never imagined that I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won.
“My promise to Wisconsin is clear: I will be a fair, impartial and common sense justice on the Wisconsin supreme court. So today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our supreme court.
“And Wisconsinites stood up loudly and said justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale,” Crawford continued in what might have been, in its own understated Midwestern way, the most powerful Democratic speech heard in months.
The result was the first obvious setback to Musk’s Republican agenda since the November election. In Washington DC, the collective frustration of the Democratic Party was channelled through an extraordinary turn in the Senate chamber by Cory Booker, who stood up to speak on Monday evening and continued for some 25 hours to deliver a speech which he labelled as a critique of this moment in America.
Shortly after 7pm on Tuesday in the chamber, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, asked Booker if he would yield for a question.
“Chuck Schumer, this is the only time I can tell you no,” Booker replied.
“I just want to tell you a question: do you know you have just broken the record? Do you know how proud this caucus is of you?” Schumer said. “Do you know how proud America is of you?”
Booker wiped his brow as euphoric cheers from his party colleagues rolled through the chamber. He put his right hand to his breast.
By then, he had been speaking for 24 hours and 19 minutes – and he wasn’t done. The record Schumer referenced belonged to Strom Thurmond, the South Carolinian who became one of the leading voices and faces of the pro-segregationist South of the late 1950s.
In August 1957, Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster or block the Civil Rights Bill, which was passed shortly after he yielded the floor. Thurmond died in 2003, aged 100, without seeing his record broken – although Ted Cruz came close in 2013, with a 21-hour speech.
“Maybe I should pull a fire alarm,” Cruz quipped of Booker late on Tuesday afternoon in a social media post. “He is gonna break my record.”
Booker’s speech was an exercise in stamina but he swung for the fences, relying on evangelical rhetoric and deeply researched references. He wasn’t attempting to thwart any legislative action but more to do something – anything – to shock the Democratic movement out of the sense of inertia or helplessness that has taken hold since their devastating presidential election campaign.
It was heavily symbolic: here was a black American politician erasing Thurmond’s indelible shadow.
“What you have done here today senator Booker couldn’t be more different than what occurred on this floor in 1957,” Connecticut senator Chris Murphy told him shortly before the record was broken.
Murphy had remained with Booker in the Senate chamber throughout Monday night, posting regular intervals from the corridors.
By Tuesday evening, both Booker and Murphy looked shattered.
“Strom Thurmond was standing in the way of inevitable progress towards equal political rights and economic rights for black Americans. It was inevitable only because the people of this nation were standing up at that moment,” Murphy told Booker.
“Today you are standing in the way not of progress but of retreat – from the rule of law, to our commitment to provide care to the most vulnerable, what used to be our common cause of zero tolerance of corruption in government.”
The moment was sweet for Booker but it is difficult to assess its longer-term significance beyond the ledgers of congressional history. The national attention span has been redefined since the black-and-white age of Strom Thurmond.
Murphy told Booker that 150 million clicks of his speech had been tabulated on a live stream on one social media platform alone. It was a start. And it coincided with two high-profile election races.
Even as Booker wound up his epic speech, Democrat hopes of a stunning reversal of party loyalty in the special House election in Florida’s District 6 were dimming.
By the time the polls closed at 8pm, Randy Fines had been elected to fill the seat vacated by Mike Waltz when he joined the Trump cabinet. Fines – who branded Ireland “anti-Semitic” in a social media post last year – had become a source of concern in the final weeks of an underwhelming election campaign in which he badly trailed the fundraising energies of his Democratic opponent.
Joshua Weil, a teacher and single father from Orlando, managed to outdo Fines, a sitting state senator, by 10 to one. But in an overwhelmingly Red district – Trump won by 30 percentage points in the November election – Fines rallied on a comfortable 15 per cent points to preserve the narrow Republican House majority on Capitol Hill.
After that, all eyes moved west to Wisconsin, where the polls closed on what is the most expensive state supreme court election in history.
Almost $100 million (€92 million) had gone into the race between Crawford and Schimel, whose campaign has been buoyed by a $22 million contribution from Elon Musk, who also flew in to give a Sunday night election town hall in Green Bay.
The financial and personal investment by the billionaire – the richest person on the planet and, since November, the “special government employee” tasked with gutting federal spending – became the focal point of the state election.
It was pointed out that Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, is currently challenging a Wisconsin law barring car manufacturers from directly owning dealerships in its state.
More generally, the election would swing the balance of power between the enactment of more liberal and conservative legislation.
But Crawford repeatedly referenced Musk’s antics – including wearing a costume cheesehead cap on Sunday evening and handing out two $1 million cheques to random voters.
It was Musk’s first campaign stage exposure without the guidance of Trump and the guaranteed devotion of his Maga rally support base.
The result is unlikely to spoil Trump’s mood as he gathers his economic wizards for the Rose Garden ceremony, in which he will explain his vision for tariffs to America and the world.
The forecast in Washington for Wednesday reads pleasantly, but with warnings of an April wind that may make the afternoon feel cold, and sharp.
