Cory Booker-- He's Running

Cory Booker's seat is up in 2020 but he persuaded New Jersey's very pliable legislature to pass a bill making it possible for "someone" to run for their Senate seat and for president at the same time. Booker has a ProgressivePunch "A" score. In fact, they rate his lifetime crucial vote record as the 4th best in the Senate, fractionally better than Bernie's! But he's not someone I'd vote for in a presidential primary. Booker isn't going to be on our Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President list. Like Beto, he's not that bad-- the way Biden, Gillibrand and Bloomberg are.

Before he decided to be progressive-- for whatever reason and for however long his commitment turns out to be-- he was an unabashed Wall Street whore, a charter school fanatic and a loony Zionist. (He may still be a loony Zionist.)

Thursday, you may have read the Shane Goldmacher/Ken Vogel piece in the NY Times about Steve Phillips launching the Dream United SuperPAC to support Booker's run for the presidency. (Booker is playing coy but he's been spending time in Iowa and talking to potential staffers there.) "A first well-funded super PAC of 2020," wrote Goldmacher and Vogel, "could aid Mr. Booker in amplifying his message in what is expected to be a historically crowded field, and it speaks to the depth of his support from potential financiers. But such support could also backfire as the grass-roots base of the party is increasingly calling to curtail the political influence of the wealthy."

Over the weekend, Ruby Cramer and Darren Sanders tried to define what a Booker campaign would look like. "Just like him," they quipped: "Vegan, Hyperactive, And Unapologetically Unconventional" and wrote that he's "spent a year laying the groundwork for an ambitious possible presidential bid." Ahhh... maybe that explains all those good votes that don't paint a picture of the Wall Street shill he used to be. He told an interviewer that he's "not going to change or warp myself to try to win any political office; I am who I am," a sure giveaway that he's been working hard to change and warp himself for the run. They wrote that he's never had a drink in his life and that he "hardly sleeps and is never not firing off emails, considers himself his own best spokesperson." Ugghhh... sounds like Trump. He also sounds like a less authentic version of author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, who is also running for president.

Where other potential candidates have sought advice on messaging, Booker has told strategists that he already knows exactly what he’d run on in 2020: a campaign about “love and inclusion”-- the “ideal,” as he sometimes describes it, “of radical love.” He has held a flurry of meetings with operatives since the midterm elections, including with possible campaign managers. Multiple donors want to start their own pro-Booker super PACs. And for the past year, Booker himself has worked with intensity, often out of view, to develop close relationships in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire-- devoting hours not just to high-ranking officials but to junior staff and volunteers. Should Booker run for president-- a decision that could come as early as the end of the year, according to some members of his orbit-- it will be in an idiosyncratic lane of his own making. If 2018 has divided Democratic politics into a puzzle of litmus tests, stark ideological labels, and an unending referendum on the mistakes of the campaign that made Donald Trump president, then Booker is a jagged piece at the center.

As a presidential candidate, he would effectively run on Hillary Clinton’s failed slogan-- “Stronger Together”-- with the belief that it was the right message to take down Trump, but that where she faltered, he would be the right messenger. (Allies say he sees no value in a “fight fire with fire” approach.) As a senator, he has both worked in opposition to the administration and also delivered its sole bipartisan victory: a major reworking of the criminal justice system that Trump signed into law Friday. And after five years in Washington, he holds a reputation as both a progressive leader in the Senate, and a friend to Wall Street with a long history of backing charter schools.

...The same would be true for Booker as a presidential candidate. He would abstain from the food at the Steak Fry in Iowa, or a low-country boil in South Carolina, because he’s a long-practicing vegan. (On a recent trip to New Hampshire, he was delighted to find a coffee shop in Manchester with excellent vegetable quinoa bowls.) He would turn down a beer with voters in any swing-state, because he’s never had a drink in his life. (As a Stanford undergrad, Booker was the designated driver at his own 21st birthday party.) He would not have a spouse to help out on the campaign trail, because he is single. (In preliminary meetings about 2020, operatives have questioned him about his personal life; he recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he is heterosexual). And while Booker would rouse voters at any black church, he could also tell you about the teachings of Buddhism, his fondness for meditation, or his deep affinity for Judaism. (As a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, he served as student president of the L’Chaim Society.)

...As Booker meets with consultants and potential staff ahead of the 2020 race, his aggressive strategy has made him a favorite in early-voting states-- if not in polls then with the local Democratic infrastructure. New Hampshire party chair Ray Buckley calls him “the best friend New Hampshire Democrats had in 2018.” And Jerry Crawford, a veteran Iowa strategist who remains uncommitted to a candidate but has taken a liking to Booker, said the senator’s October speech at the state Democratic Party's annual fall gala was “as strong an appearance as I've ever seen in Iowa.” (Booker and his team, sources around him said, started negotiating that speaking slot more than a year ago.)

“It rivaled Barack Obama in 2007,” Crawford said.

...Booker views his own 2020 lane as most closely in line with the one that Sen. Kamala Harris or Rep. Beto O’Rourke might occupy, according to people in his orbit. He is not, he knows, an heir apparent to the voters who’ve historically gravitated to progressive icons like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. (Notably, Sanders advisers do not describe Booker with skepticism: The Vermont senator, they’ve said, not only likes Booker but views him as a man who has the potential to inspire on the stump.)

“Our engagement with Cory has been like his record-- a bit of a mixed bag,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, a progressive organization that works closely with senators like Warren, Sanders, and Oregon’s Jeff Merkley. “Cory Booker’s staff has engaged with us from time to time, but of the progressive champions in our movement, he’s one of the least to reach out.”

In an interview this week, Booker didn’t mind letting on that he’s feeling fulfilled by his recent work in the Senate. Criminal justice work, he said, was a big reason he came to Washington five years ago. The Trump-backed First Step Act, passed in the Senate on Wednesday, was crafted to expand judges’ discretion in sentencing, allow early release for certain federal inmates, and reduce some mandatory minimum sentences.

Booker first expressed support for the bill last month. Other likely candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren were slower to back the legislation, potentially setting the stage for an ideological debate in 2020 around one of Trump’s few bipartisan acts. Booker just doesn’t see the issue through a political lens. (He quickly dismissed a question about whether he’d stand with Trump if invited to a signing ceremony.)

The senator can, and frequently does, talk for hours about criminal justice. He thinks a lot about how to rehabilitate ex-offenders, legislate with compassion for victims, and administer justice humanely, particularly for juvenile offenders. He seems unconcerned if political figures view criminal justice fixes as a way to attract attention from the party’s base on the left, or to bolster fiscal bona fides on the right. As Booker views it, criminal justice is the quintessential tableau to promote and pursue the relational themes he craves: the radical love, the courageous empathy, the collaborative spirit.

Activists have taken a more side-eyed view of the First Step Act, which only goes so far. Michelle Alexander, whose book on mass incarceration is the seminal work on the subject, has argued that the current system of politics-- which exacerbated inequality in criminal justice in the first place-- is ill-equipped to truly overhaul the system. When asked if he took issue with the idea that a self-professed “law-and-order” president would be the one to sign the bill, Booker said Alexander is one of the people who deserves credit for the change, calling her book, “very, very important.”

...“There’s no question that he’s on our members’ radar,” said Democracy for America’s Chamberlain. “But he isn’t a conventional candidate. His biggest issue will be his answer for how he’s going to stand up to corporate power.”

Booker's not as phony as Trump but... that's a low bar and he doesn't come across as being even vaguely authentic, at least not to me. On the other hand, what do I know... if voters were able to buy Trump's carny routine, Booker's could be-- will be-- an even easier sell.