Salon's Steve Kornacki: Cory Booker: Surrogate from Hell

[flpoljunkie]

Cory Booker, surrogate from hell
What Cory Booker has to gain by calling President Obama’s attacks on Bain Capital “nauseating”

BY STEVE KORNACKI

If Cory Booker went on “Meet the Press” on Sunday with the intent of helping President Obama, then his appearance was an utter failure. But anyone who’s followed the enormously ambitious Newark mayor’s career closely knows he’s not one to pull a Joe Biden. He’s just too smart and too smooth to screw up so epically.

More likely, Booker went on the show to help himself and to advance his own long-term political prospects. And on that score, his appearance was a success.

Playing up Romney’s Bain record is, of course, central to Obama’s general election plan. Romney is running as a business-savvy “job creator” and relying on the public’s tendency to associate private sector success with economic competence. There is no overstating how vital it is for Obama and his campaign to break that link, and to establish that Romney’s real expertise is in making investors rich – not adding jobs and improving the quality of life for middle class workers.

In belittling this strategy, Booker isn’t just breaking with Obama, he’s breaking with just about everyone who’s ever run against Romney – including Ted Kennedy, who used criticisms of Bain’s treatment of workers to pull away from Romney in their 1994 Senate race. Essentially, Kennedy created the blueprint that Obama is now using. Booker is also providing Republicans with a dream talking point: A top Obama surrogate not only disapproves of Obama’s use of Bain, he finds it nauseating!

It wouldn’t be surprising if Booker has already heard from the White House, and surely he’s now in for a world of abuse from Obama supporters. But that hardly means he made a mistake, at least in terms of his own ambition. Financial support from Wall Street and, more broadly speaking, the investor class has been key to Booker’s rise, and remains key to his future dreams.

more...

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/20/cory_booker_surrogate_from_hell/

[otohara]

1. Don't Listen to Booker Team Obama

We all need to learn more about vulture capitalism.

[CTyankee]

2. I'm sure they were onto his game a LONG time ago. I know I was and I ain't that brilliant...

[66 dmhlt]

3. Cory Booker: Doing His Best Harold Ford Imitation on MTP