Cory Booker Bows Out
Photo by Gage Skidmore
Cory Booker announces that he will be returning to his day job as Senator from New Jersey.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) dropped out of the presidential race Monday, citing a lack of financial resources and exposure from the debates.
In a high-energy video peppered with moments from his speeches and events, he said that he “can’t wait to get back on the campaign trail” to work for other candidates, including the eventual nominee.
Booker did not qualify for the democratic debate in Iowa on Tuesday, and was a vocal critic of the DNC’s metrics.
His campaign, based on positivity and hope with the tagline “we will rise,” failed to take off. He quickly fell behind less experienced candidates like South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in both polling and financial resources.
His fundraising was so anemic in September that he sent out an emergency plea, an “unvarnished look” at the financial flailing of the campaign.
Warren/Booker is now on the table.Report
Booker and Harris suffered from the same problems:
1. Neither could settle on a campaign strategy or issue and seem to go back and forth. Nor did they have Warren’s “I have a plan for it” persona.
2. They could not peel off older black voters from Biden or younger black voters from Sanders.
Booker had some extra baggage because of his work with Zucks on charter schools and to a lesser extent his support of Wall Street and Pharma. I’m more sympathetic about the second part because Wall Street and Pharma are major employers in New Jersey and provide lots of steady employment and opportunities for adjacent businesses and jobs.
American politics seems to be mainly about jobs, jobs, jobs because we are too puritanical to consider a post-work future. A good paying job is best but any job is better than UNI (aka the dole) in the American psyche. I suspect that this is more so now because our politicians come from the workaholic classReport
Warren-Booker has a geographic balance problem. So too Sanders-Booker. Biden-Booker would be even worse. He might fit well with Klobuchar or Mayor Pete.Report
Geographic balance is overrated. Clinton-Gore doubled down on the same geography, and as for Obama-Biden, ‘Delaware’ is myth created by corporate lawyers and interstate highway builders.Report
There is a difference btw/ doubling down on a region that a party wants to flip (and Clinton-Gore flipped 4 to 6 southern states) and doubling down on areas of party strength. And I’m not sure if the primaries show that Booker really gets out the African-American vote.Report
The flip thing is absolutely correct. Also, an ebony-ivory ticket is different than a regional ticket. And so on. Due to the sample size, you cannot really tell what is good or bad, statistically. It is all gut feeling.Report
I am not insisting that geographic balance is necessary, only that it is usually treated that way by the people who make these decisions.Report
Gotcha. Of course the proponent of a given idea is always going to be the biggest cheerleader.
Regionalism made sense when that was major factor in the country, such as post civil war. But as we have de facto expanded the franchise, other groupings are far more important. There are so few of these events that each one must be taken on its own merits, and belly feel is probably the best metric.Report
A geographic problem, but not balance. The VP candidate for the Dems hasn’t counted for much since Johnson. The problem is the lack of enthusiasm in the rest of the country for Dem candidates from the NE urban corridor at the top of the ticket. In an election likely to be settled by GOTV and excitement in Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, a candidate from the NE starts with a handicap.
I’m not remarking on why that lack of enthusiasm exists, only that it’s a thing.Report
The best quip I saw was a photo of Booker labeled “Departacus”. ^_^Report