RUTHFULLY YOURS

Senator Cory Booker has a perverse talent for making his own tics into issues.

Every 2020 Dem is sending out a spate of frantic fundraising emails, but Booker turns his into an event billing it as “radical transparency” when he warns that he’s going to drop out if he doesn’t get $1.7 million in 10 days.

Here’s the bottom line: Cory 2020 needs to raise an additional $1.7 million by September 30 to be in a position to build the organization necessary to continue competing for the nomination. Without a fundraising surge to close out this quarter, we do not see a legitimate long-term path forward.

Every other candidate in the race would have to die or be convicted of raping fire hydrants for Cory to have a shot.

It’s not happening.

We’ve known since the very beginning that he entered this race with some challenges — he didn’t have the near-100% name recognition of some candidates who’ve been on the national stage before… If we do hit our goal, we believe we will ultimately win the nomination

Sorry, no.

Booker’s problem isn’t name recognition. He’s polling at 9% in New Jersey. His own state.

In a presidential preference test among Garden State Democratic voters and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party, Booker (9%) trails former Vice President Joe Biden (26%), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (20%), and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (18%).  California Sen. Kamala Harris (6%) and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (6%) are the only other candidates in a field of 19 who garner more than 2% support.

If you’re at 9% in your own state, your problem isn’t name recognition. Your problem is you.

And Booker’s numbers have kept on dropping.

The New Jersey public as a whole has become less likely to feel that Booker would make a good president since he first launched his campaign. Currently, 29% say he would make a good president and 52% say he would not, with 19% having no opinion. In February, 37% felt he would make a good president and 42% said he would not.

And there’s the water.

“Newark’s water emergency demands our federal government’s immediate attention. Everyone deserves clean, safe water – it’s shameful that our national crisis of lead-contaminated water disproportionately hits poor black and brown communities like my own,” Booker tweeted.

Did a “national crisis” cause Newark’s clean water crisis?

Booker probably forgot that he had served as the ex-officio chairman of the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation. It’s understandable that Spartacus forgot all about it because while he was running Newark, he never actually attended a single NWCDC meeting.

The NWCDC was being paid $10 million a year to manage Newark’s water.

Linda Watkins-Brashear, a Booker ally and donor, worked as the director of the NWCDC. At least until she was arrested, tried and convicted in a $1 million kickback scheme. The scandal broke during Booker’s final year in office. And the NWCDC, Board of Trustees, which he was supposed to be overseeing, took swift action by dissolving the board, and writing a $450,000 check to Brashear.

The corporate media monopoly may be suppressing the story nationally, but locals know about it.

The poll also finds that about half of New Jersey residents say Booker has either a great deal (28%) or some (23%) responsibility for the drinking water problem in Newark – the city he led as mayor until 2013.  Just 1-in-5 say he has only a little (10%) or no (10%) responsibility for this.

Hail, Spartacus.