Cory Booker's problem

     "This is a referendum on the dream. We need to stand up, united and say 'I too, dream America.' We won't die in the pit. We won't just get rid of Donald Trump. We will rise!"

     Cory Booker to AFL-CIO in Iowa

Cory Booker looks near perfect on paper.

He is a version of the Type-O Negative candidate, the Universal Donor.

Cory Booker has achieved at the highest levels within the white American meritocracy.  Joe Biden had called Obama "articulate." Booker is articulate.  

Booker played the archetypal masculine game, football, and has stayed in shape. He looks buff. He is also vegan, which gets mocked on Fox News. Booker is tough, but urbane.

He was a high school All American football player, then a graduate of Stanford, then got a degree from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, a Yale Law degree, then a big city Mayor, then a US Senator--a checklist of white meritocracy. Safe for whites.

Booker at Stanford

He was accused in his first election of being "not black enough"--his parents were both executives at IBM, and he grew up in a suburb. Booker got street cred from running a free legal clinic for people in poverty in New Haven, another poverty legal clinic in New York, he lived in a tent in a ten day hunger strike, and has done effective work on poverty and affordable housing issues in Newark, where he won elections. He won contested elections in a majority black city. Black enough.

Booker is a bachelor. There are rumors he is gay. "I am heterosexual," he told the Philadelphia Enquirer. But he doesn't talk about it, and he changes the subject. He is not conspicuously dating. He has a strong record in support of LGBTQ positions, and says that he doesn't mind if people wonder if he is gay, and he is comfortable with people thinking he is. But he isn't. More Type-O Negative.

There is one area where there is middle ground, but it is not a safe spot within the current Democratic Party: appearing "corporate." Cory Booker has a very liberal voting record, but he is a New Jersey senator, and New Jersey is home for much of Wall Street and Pharmaceutical executives. 

He is considered "corporate" by progressives. He dresses in suits and looks like he would be at ease in corporate board rooms. He looks urban. Sophisticated. He doesn't project that he listens to country music or eats fried pork on a stick at the Iowa State Fair. Indeed, he declined to eat it, which got discussed in Iowa and on Fox News.

He has supported charter schools, and he supports having private health insurance be part of the mix, not Medicare for All, a current litmus test for candidates. He is accused from the left of being too close to big dollar donors. His senate campaigns received significant money from Wall Street and drug executives--more than Senator Gillibrand received.

The Cory Booker problem: he isn't first and he isn't number one.  

Barrack Obama already got the buzz from being a nominally black candidate for president. Pete Buttigieg got the buzz for being the super-smart Rhodes Scholar. Booker does not contest Sanders or Warren for the progressive vote. He is not alone in seeking criminal justice reform. He is not noteworthy on issues of war and peace the way Tulsi Gabbard does.

There is no one or two word brand association with Booker.

Booker references the Biblical Joesph in his oratory and he echos Martin Luther King in the summary of his speech to Iowa Labor. He speaks of uplift and triumph. It is good oratory, but the audience did not rise to its feet at its end. It is almost great.

To stay in the race as the nominee Booker needs to be first choice in polls, and then win some elections.  Either he needs to up his game or--more likely--some of the people ahead of him need to falter.

It could happen.