Sen. Cory Booker is tired of hearing about “electability.”
The race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination certainly is about choosing a candidate who can defeat President Donald Trump in the general election, he says, but it’s also about much more than that.
“Democrats shouldn’t modulate our values or try to triangulate our policy positions based upon what some pundits say is electability,” Booker said this week.
You can expect the New Jersey senator to land hard on this point when he’s in Portland Sunday for a fundraiser. Booker “will speak about this moral moment in America and this election being about more than one person in one office,” Booker state communications director Julie McClain Downey told The Oregonian. “It’s a referendum on us, and who we are to each other.”
She added that, in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton this month, Booker is also expected to talk about his plan to combat gun violence.
“We won’t wait for more thoughts and prayers for communities that have been shattered by gun violence,” Booker said back in May. He’s called for universal background checks, banning assault weapons -- and “bring[ing] a fight to the NRA.”
“Grassroots” fundraisers like the one Sunday for Booker, at The Riveter working space (located in the Washington High School building) in Southeast Portland, are increasingly important to the many so-called “second-tier” candidates in the Democratic presidential field.
Booker has already qualified for September’s nationally televised debates, but bringing in dollars and adding donors will only become harder in the weeks ahead for candidates struggling in the polls. The former mayor of Newark right now stands at around 2 percent in national polling.
Booker is calling on Democrats to look beyond “the safe bet” -- meaning former Vice President Joe Biden, who holds a commanding lead in the polls and is considered both the field’s centrist and the party-insiders’ choice.
The New Jersey senator insists he’s “running in this election because I know we can do more than that.”
Find out more about Sunday’s event.
-- Douglas Perry
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