Cory Booker and Lower-Tier Are Dems Starting to See the Abyss
I do not know if all of you are fully woke to this but Cory Booker became famous in 2012 for the same reason that Magic Johnson made headlines in 2019, which was for running out of a house on fire. In Magic’s case, that house on fire was the LA Lakers, where he was in charge of basketball operations for a team that stunk so much that it could not even win in a girls’ YMCA league. In Cory Booker’s case, the house on fire belonged to his neighbor in Newark, whose life he saved by running into it and physically carrying her out. This incident in 2012 was the first time most Americans heard Cory Booker’s name, unless you were a hardcore Stanford football back in the day.
But now there are reports in the Fake News Media (FNM) that Sen. Booker might be exiting another house on fire, which is his presidential campaign. This is important for this gambling market:
Last week I said that I thought Booker would hang around until South Carolina and that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Julian Castro would be the next to quit. But since then, the FNM has surfaced an internal campaign memo where Booker’s staff says he might drop out if he can’t raise $1.7 million by the end of the quarter (Sept. 30). That is a serious amount of dough for a guy whose only raised nine million bucks all year.
This tells me something bigger about the 2020 race, which is that the Democratic summer soldiers are getting seriously burned out from fighting this campaign and are tired of mucking it out in the trenches against better funded opponents, like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. Booker’s stunt is all the proof I need to know that the lower-tier Democrats are no longer seeing the upside of running for President (a cabinet selection, brand building, maybe a VP shot), and are starting to feel the risks (looking like a moron, draining your war chest, inviting a home state primary). It kind of makes sense because neither of the last two debates have moved the needle for the Democratic JV team. Basically people just don’t give a shit that Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, and Julian Castro are running for president. Here is an RCP chart that proves me right:
To add to that, Cory Booker is up for re-election in 2020. This means that he literally cannot afford to stay in this race and max-out his credit cards for a campaign he knows he has no real shot at winning. Whoops, too late. Cory Booker has already borrowed $2 million from his Senate campaign to poll at about the same level as Skrillex’s haircut, which I would also bet gets less than 3 percent of likely Democratic voters’ support just like him.
For the time being, Booker can still call take-backs and re-deposit that cheddar into his Senate account. But if he blows through all his cash on a White House run, then draws a primary and/or a good GOP challenger, Cory Booker will once again find himself in a house on fire– and this time he might be the one who needs rescuing. That is why I rate Booker’s threat to quit the 2020 race as highly credible, but I doubt he does it before the Oct 15 debate, which will give him some much-needed face time with the American people that could up his fundraising numbers and also be a free clinic on how to talk so fast that no one actually digests what you are saying.
I am now placing Booker second in line behind Tulsi Gabbard to quit, provided that Tulsi does not qualify for the October debate. It is obvious that Democrats who have actual belongings to protect, like a seat in Congress, are more likely to drop out than candidates who have nothing to lose. Basically, at the end of the day, Julian Castro will still look identical to his brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro, and will be able to bullshit people into thinking he is a Congressman regardless of how he does in this primary. Meanwhile, Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard will just be two more weirdos with good bodies if they were to lose in November.
One of my rules of betting is that I don’t switch lanes once I’ve made my choice. But if you were going to bet that Booker was the next out, I would say go for it. Cory Booker is a total weirdo but I personally think he is a pretty straight forward guy. If he says he is about ready to quit, I buy it.
KEENDAWG.
