Cory Booker: The Other Rhodes Scholar

He picked a fight.
Booker is positioning himself: 

***He is more black than Biden. 

***More woke than Biden. 

***More critical of the swamp than Biden.

Joe Biden must have thought he was well within the safe harbor of things to say. He said he was an effective legislator on behalf of justice in part because he appreciated civility and could get along with others, even people he disagreed with, even southern segregationist senators. 

Surely this was OK to say. No. 

Sanders, Warren, Harris, and Booker criticized Biden, with Booker the most prominent, saying Biden should apologize. He shouldn't have used getting along with segregationist senators to make his point. It was hurtful to black Americans, Booker said.

Hurtful.

Booker is making his move. Booker did not have a natural base of Democratic voters who would pick his name first. Now he is getting one, the identity conscious black vote, a significant sleeve of the Democratic electorate.

Cory Booker has every reason to think that he, not Pete Buttigieg, should be the number three or four person on the Democratic leader board. Booker has the edge in credentials.

Booker is a Rhodes Scholar, just like Buttigieg. Booker went on and got a law degree from Harvard, and Buttigieg didn't. Booker was mayor of Newark, a city three times the size of South Bend. Booker got elected statewide as a US Senator, and Buttigieg hasn't. Booker is the right age (50), the right color (light skinned black), and is heterosexual.

But Buttigieg had a natural base of young people, gay-friendly people, and people who wanted someone completely new, and from that ember, got noticed. It wasn't happening for Booker. Booker was perceived as slick, as close to Wall Street, as corporate friendly. But not as the spokesman for black Democrats.

Booker is fixing that. 

Booker's criticism of Biden for being hurtful comes on top of Booker testifying to the Senate on behalf of reparations to repay black Americans for the wealth confiscated by their black ancestors. Advocates of reparations don't rest their case on slavery's theft of labor. They note the hundred years of Jim Crow, the segregated civil service and military, federal policies that red-lined housing, the overt policies of government that disadvantaged blacks and kept them from accumulating the wealth that whites, living across the tracks on the good part of town, were gaining.

The issue of reparations is deeply divisive. 

Poll: "Overwhelming opposition to reparations."

White Americans are overwhelmingly opposed. They don't feel guilty for the sins of their great, great grandparents, and they don't think the great, great grandchildren of slaves deserve payment. Blacks feel differently.

Republicans love the issue. It energizes their voters and allows racial talk, and to do it about money give-aways, not prejudice itself, a perfect dog whistle. Plus, it pushes Democrats into overt or implied criticism of white Americans. 

Trump says that America is great; Democrats say that Americans are guilty. Of course, Republicans love the issue.

So it may seem crazy of Booker to bring up reparations, a loser issue. Why is Booker bringing it up? He needs a base, a toe-hold. 

I attach a guest comment from Tony Farrell, who has written here before. Farrell is a prosperous, Bay Area man, a college classmate, and a nationally recognized expert on branding and product positioning. Click: Linkedin bio.

Facebook critics about his earlier observations on this blog noted, correctly, that he appears to be a country club liberal, one of those who did well in the current economic system. That is true. He could be "profiled" as part of the comfortable liberal donor class. (As, I suppose, can I.) 

He is put off by Booker. Booker is encouraging tribalism, Farrell says. Yes, indeed. That is the point. Booker needs his tribe, and the dissatisfaction of the Ferrell-type voters may prove Booker's sincerity to his tribe because Booker is paying a price for his position. Booker loses the support of voters who have season tickets to Stanford games, in exchange for the bigger block of voters up for grabs, black Democrats looking for a champion.



Guest Comment by Tony Farrell

Farrell

            Because I’ve held Stanford football season tickets for 40 years, I must have seen Cory Booker play. 

But I’ve no memory of him commanding any sort of bullying presence on the gridiron; as a candidate, he seems to be trying to make up for it. 

Cory “Bring It On!” Booker has that “in-your-face, who-you-lookin’-at?” quality that belies claims he otherwise might make about being able to listen to those who disagree with him, or to work “across the aisle” (current parlance) to realize goals.

His enthusiastic arguments favoring “reparations” for slavery is, to me, the bale-of-straw that flattened the poor camel. Perhaps Booker’s invested in Ancestry.com and 23andMe—anticipating reparations as a windfall for claimants of African heritage? (If I discover such ancestry, even at Warren’s “Pocahontas” level, I’m also applying for a 50 percent “Irish bump,” because in the 1850s, Irish and blacks were cast by the Anglo tribe into the same sub-human species.) 

Our Constitution and Civil Rights laws; anti-discrimination; affirmative action; voting rights; so many other remedies are aimed at the legacy of slavery and the current impact of racism. More laws and remedies are needed, I’m sure. But “reparations,” as any English-speaker understands, are a toxic concept that would profoundly divide Americans in a misguided scramble to prove entitlement, or to fight against entitlement.

“Bring It On!” Booker has zero chance to lead America away from Trump tribalism; quite the contrary, “Bring It On!” Booker promises a continuation of identity warfare, with the inane reparations idea its centerpiece. 

The big question is whether Trump is an aberration, after whom America will return to a more conventional civility; or if Trump has opened the gates to a more coarse and divisive America. 

“Bring It On!” Booker promises a dismal outcome—a leftist Trump.