“I rise in this chamber to get in good trouble,” said Cory Booker before delivering the longest Senate speech in modern American history. The senator from New Jersey stood for 25 hours and five minutes to condemn the actions of the Trump Administration in a marathon address.

Before Booker, the record was held by Strom Thurmond, who filibustered every single Civil Rights Bill that came before the Senate, and once stood for 24hr 18min in an attempt to stop the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Thurmond, a former state Democrat turned Republican, founded the “Dixiecrat” movement, a segregationist offshoot that opposed racial integration and the landmark Brown v Board of Education decision, which overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v Ferguson.

Booker, who confronted the weight of surpassing Thurmond’s record, said: “I’m not here, though, because of his speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”

Although Thurmond died in 2002, he was not merely a man of his time. Thurmond can serve as a reminder of the ongoing, distinctly American struggle for egalitarian ideals. The backlash to Booker’s filibuster is another nauseating reminder of how far we have regressed on racial discourse over the past couple of months.

The Democratic Party is facing tremendous backlash for not providing a vicious enough defence to the Republican Party as it attempts to reframe history and flirt with unconstitutionality. First by allowing an unelected billionaire access to government departments. Then deporting students for writing op-eds, and unlawfully detaining Canadians, Americans and a visiting scientist who was apparently critical of the administration at the border.

In 2023, the most frequent words used to describe American politics are “divisive”, “corrupt”, “messy” and “polarised”. But are the Democrats to blame for the polarising situation? It’s complicated but, mostly, no.

Data shows that the Republican Party has moved farther to the Right than the Democrats have moved to the Left. So, ideologically, the space between the Left and the Right is growing, but mostly, it is pulling in one direction — the Right.

The Republican Party appears to be prioritising cultural wars in the absence of sound economic policy and pragmatism. The first page of the GOP platform 2024 read “Dedicated to the forgotten women and men of America” and “A return to common sense” — a nod to issues across education, critical race theory, gender and more. Take, for example, the US Naval Academy, which recently banned nearly 400 works from its library — including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Janet Jacobs’s Memorialising the Holocaust: Genocide and Collective Memory. This was done in compliance with executive orders from the Trump Administration aimed at removing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from public institutions, replacing them with an emphasis on “individual dignity, hard work and excellence.”

The Right is not only becoming more right-wing, but also dominates the media ecosystem, particularly in non-political spaces such as podcasts and sport. This matters because right-wing influencers are dragging the ideological centre rightward, while the Left struggles to maintain the coalitions it depends on. The transition away from traditional media to podcast-based consumption provides sobering evidence for this trend. Nine out of ten of the most popular platforms are right-wing, and virtually no left-wing shows have a comparable following to right-wing shows. Joe Rogan has the largest following, with 39.9 million, followed by Ben Shapiro at 25 million, Jordan Peterson at 23 million, Russell Brand at 22.5 million and Theo Von at 22.3 million. The “left-leaning show” with the largest audience is Trevor Noah’s podcast, with more than 21.1 million subscribers, followed by The Young Turks at 12 million and The Breakfast Club at 11.4 million.

These numbers aren’t just about entertainment; they represent the outcomes of the election. At Trump’s 2024 victory party, Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White personally thanked podcasters Theo Von and Joe Rogan for amplifying Trump’s message to White male audiences. The results? Seventy-four per cent of White men and 69 per cent of White women — the largest beneficiaries of DEI — voted for Trump in 2024, despite how pronounced Trump’s anti-DEI position was.

While the Right consolidated power through media and narrative, the Left splintered. Caught in a web of infighting over performers at the Democratic Convention, and in the absence of a perfect candidate, many shortsightedly withdrew from one of the most consequential elections in modern American history. The criticism of Booker’s speech reminded me of how hypocritical our standards can be: protest but make it respectable. We want a woman president, but not that one. Or that one. We support DEI, but only when it’s safe.

Former president Barack Obama called out this double standard last weekend in upstate New York. He said that “it’s hard to imagine that people who are silent now would’ve been silent when he was in office”. For example, Obama was assailed for wearing a tan suit during a press conference, while Donald Trump upends years of press pool access and went golfing as the Dow dropped 2,200 points.

In reflecting on the future of the Democratic Party, I think of the party's most reliable voting bloc — those who have always accepted some level of disappointment in pursuit of the long game. As we enter a new phase of international and domestic uncertainty, we would do well to learn from them: start local. Think long term. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress.

• Tierrai Tull is the founder of Bermuda Youth Connect, studying at Oxford in the Department of Politics and International Relations on the Rhodes Scholarship