Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey joins the 2020 presidential race

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post



Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said Friday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president, adding his name to a growing and increasingly diversified field of 2020 candidates intent on taking on President Trump. Booker made his announcement via an email and video to supporters, and had interviews scheduled throughout the day.

"The history of our nation is defined by collective action; by interwoven destinies of slaves and abolitionists; of those born here and those who chose America as home; of those who took up arms to defend our country, and those who linked arms to challenge and change it," Booker said in his video, which made repeated references to Trump and his actions as president.

"I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame," he said.

Booker joined a race already occupied by three other senators -- Kamala D. Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York -- as well as several other candidates.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/sen-cory-booker-of-new-jersey-joins-the-2020-presidential-race/2019/01/31/b30ebe22-0027-11e9-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html

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Breaking news banners going like crazy - including NYT & CNN and even my local paper Philly Inquirer (since he is from Jersey and we cover the South Jersey media market).

[aeromanKC]

1. Who?

He's going nowhere.

[3Hotdogs]

2. B Bu But BUt BUT he's Spartacus.

[groundloop]

8. You may be surprised.... IMO he's a very viable candidate.

We've got some extremely good candidates this time..... it's going to be like a kid in a candy store having to pick just one. I think that people will start taking Sen. Booker very seriously once he starts campaigning and everyone hears his message.

[NurseJackie]

3. I'm exceedingly pleased to hear this!

[NewJeffCT]

4. I like the guy, but

I think he was a hotter ticket 2 years ago than he is now, or at least it seems that way.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. Here is his speech at 2106 Dem Convention. Judge for yourself whether he could win (I say yes)

Americans like actor presidents, reality TV shows presidents--they like their president to look good on television. Cory Booker does very well on television.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Plus, I hate to say

they gotta be "tall" (although I am not sure how such would apply to women since we haven't had one yet).

[George II]

7. New Jersey suffers the fate of being sandwiched between...

Philadelphia and New York City.

I've been waiting for this. My potential candidates are now down to him and Harris.

[mcar]

9. A good addition to the field

[TexasAggieDemocrat12]

10. Hard pass

His over the top performance in the committee hearings turned me off of him.

[Calista241]

13. I agree. The whole Sparticus thing will be repeated ad nauseam.

it just looked so contrived, and it's not like the documents he was talking about were even super relevant.

[BeneathTheMire]

11. A great candidate

Who’s personal choices actually reflect his view on climate change.

[Bayard]

12. I like him

Our field is going to be incredible.

[JaneQPublic]

14. Been defending him on Twitter against certain factions

Probably a good portion of them are Russian trolls, but they are repeating some long-refuted claims about him being a "DINO Pharma supporter." I am proudly undecided, but I will defend ANY of our great Dem candidates from attacks like these.

For anyone else running into these bogus arguments, here are some good resources:

A fact-check defending his record on a health care vote:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/18/other-98/viral-image-about-democratic-senators-and-big-phar/

Booker's career Campaign Finance file on Open Secrets showing Pharma is not a big supporter.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00035267&cycle=CAREER&type=I

The Progressive Punch ranking of Senators by their Progressive Score (Booker is #4):
https://progressivepunch.org/scores.htm?house=senate

[BumRushDaShow]

15. I posted this in my GD thread on the subject

(NYT article that included a graphic of overall progressive policy rankings based on 2017 data, with the highlighted Senators being those who voiced support for single payer)



https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/13/us/sanders-medicare-for-all-plan-support.html

[JaneQPublic]

16. Excellent!

I'll be stealing this.

Thanks!

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Here is a link to where the data came from and I found their most recent (for the 116th Congress)

https://voteview.com/congress/senate

If you scroll down to the list of all the Senators, there are blue-highlighted option links to sort the data - including the current ranking of the members. Plus they have this in tabular form here - https://voteview.com/congress/senate/-1/text

From the tablular, the top 10 "liberals" were these -

1. WARREN, Elizabeth Democrat Massachusetts -0.757
2. HARRIS, Kamala Devi Democrat California -0.694
3. BOOKER, Cory Anthony Democrat New Jersey -0.615
4. BALDWIN, Tammy Democrat Wisconsin -0.522
5. SANDERS, Bernard Independent Vermont -0.521
6. MARKEY, Edward John Democrat Massachusetts -0.503
7. HIRONO, Mazie Democrat Hawaii -0.486
8. MERKLEY, Jeff Democrat Oregon -0.481
9. UDALL, Thomas (Tom) Democrat New Mexico -0.454
10. BROWN, Sherrod Democrat Ohio -0.438

https://voteview.com/congress/senate/-1/text

That site's "About" says this -

About the project

Voteview allows users to view every congressional roll call vote in American history on a map of the United States and on a liberal-conservative ideological map including information about the ideological positions of voting Senators and Representatives. The original Voteview of DOS was developed by Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal at Carnegie-Mellon University between 1989 and 1992. Poole and Rosenthal developed Voteview for Windows in 1993 at Princeton University and that work was continued by Boris Shor. The legacy version of the website is available at legacy.voteview.com.

The new voteview.com combines the visualizations provided by the now obsolete Voteview desktop system, data and NOMINATE estimates provided by the old voteview.com web site, and up-to-date voting data from the current Congress with new search, download and visualization functionality.

Ideological positions are calculated using the DW-NOMINATE (Dynamic Weighted NOMINAl Three-step Estimation). This procedure was developed by Poole and Rosenthal in the 1980s and is a "scaling procedure", representing legislators on a spatial map. In this sense, a spatial map is much like a road map--the closeness of two legislators on the map shows how similar their voting records are. Using this measure of distance, DW-NOMINATE is able to recover the "dimensions" that inform congressional voting behavior.

The primary dimension through most of American history has been "liberal" vs. "conservative" (also referred to as "left" vs. "right" ). A second dimension picks up differences within the major political parties over slavery, currency, nativism, civil rights, and lifestyle issues during periods of American history.

More: https://voteview.com/about

[JaneQPublic]

18. Cool! And here's another

A slightly different way of ranking members progressiveness: How often they vote with or against Trump (produced by FiveThirtyEight):

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/

Once again, Booker ranks among the Top 5 senators to vote AGAINST Trump (only 14.8 percent of the time).

(BTW, the senator who votes against Trump the most is Gillibrand at a mere 11.4 percent.)

Thanks again, BRDS, for sharing great materials!

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Thanks for the 538 link

I haven't been over there to look at their other stuff in awhile!

[akraven]

20. We don't have a single bad choice for 2020!

No matter which way we go!