Sen. Cory Booker is polling behind Andrew Yang, which is ridiculous. So, it must be tempting for him to grasp at the advice he gets everywhere, to show some anger.

Booker’s core problem, many experts say, is that he is trying to sell love at a moment when no one wants to buy it. The Democratic base wants a warrior beast, he’s often told, one that bares its teeth and growls when Donald Trump walks by.

“You’ve got to punch him right in the face,” one of Booker’s fans told him recently.

Folks, it’s not going to happen. It would be fake and obvious, and it’s not worth it to him.

“If the idea of healing and unity and bringing the country together for common causes is not what voters want, I’m fine with that,” he told me. “But I’m being my authentic self. And it’s the reason I’m running.”

It’s corny stuff, yes. Booker is so earnest he’s nerdy, a vegan who never drinks a drop of booze, a spiritual searcher who meditates with such sincerity that he actually seems to believe the stuff about loving your enemy.

When Booker was the Democratic mayor in Newark, he not only made political deals on schools and crime with Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican; he called the man his friend, and still does. In the U.S. Senate, he cut a bipartisan deal to pull back on mass incarceration, finding the only scrap of common ground in town, just as he improbably promised in his campaign.

“He was the go-to guy on criminal justice reform,” said Rutgers Prof. Ross Baker, a scholar of the U.S. Senate.

I’m glad Booker is still standing. Because he takes a lot of grief he doesn’t deserve, and he’s peddling some great ideas we need to hear.

The grief is mostly his punishment for his repeated defiance of orthodoxy, which helps explain why I like him.

An example: He doesn’t want to shut down nuclear power plants ahead of schedule because he sees climate change as a far more urgent threat than radiation leaks. I’m glad someone is saying that.

Another: He worked with Christie to expand successful charter schools in Newark and Camden, and the result is higher test scores and graduation rates. He supported a groundbreaking contract that gave extra cash to the most effective teachers and denied raises to the least effective. It caused more of the best to stay, and more of the worst to leave, as hoped.

President Obama supported all that, too, but the politics has changed. Since Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as education secretary, she’s become the poisonous face of school choice among many Democrats. I’m glad Booker is there to point to talk about facts on the ground

“I will stand up for my kids and what’s working for them no matter what,” he says. “I don’t know what the DeVos impact is, hard to measure. But I live in a low-income community and I have seen the anguish from parents who had no good options for their kids.”

So far, Booker hasn’t gotten much buzz for what strikes me as the single best idea to emerge from this campaign, known as Baby Bonds. He would give every newborn a check for $1,000, with the government contributing up to $2,000 more every year, based on income. It would cost $60 billion a year, paid for it by soaking the rich through the estate tax.

Here’s the charm of it: By age 21, the poorest kids would have nearly $50,000 saved, money that could be used only for college, a first home, or a new business.

“It’s an idea that comes from think tanks on both sides of the aisle,” Booker says. “It gets big applause. We’re proud of it. We need more people to know about it.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has cornered the wonk market in this race, but I don’t buy it. Her most ambitious proposals depend on money she’d raise from an aggressive wealth tax, which is unlikely to pass Congress. Booker’s plan is realistic.

But no one’s going to hear much about it unless Booker finds a way to sell his brand of brotherly love in a year like this.

It’s not that Booker is a meek fellow who shies away from confrontation. You can ask the old guard in Newark about that, the ones he demolished by the time he was 40. What Booker will not do is demonize the other side.

He is the anti-Trump. And he says we shouldn’t believe the stories about the Democratic base being thirsty for blood.

“We just were in a rural area of Iowa where about 1,200 people turned up,” Booker says, “and everyone who shook my hand said, ‘You have the message. We can’t be like the guy we’re against.’

“If we beat Donald Trump by being like Donald Trump, we’ll further divide this country,” Booker says. “We need someone who can call us to common cause and common purpose. I get standing ovations for that.”

The last few weeks have shaken up the Democratic race, as Sen. Bernie Sanders scaled back his schedule after a heart attack, and Joe Biden fended off questions about the big bucks his incredibly unqualified son earned by trading off the Biden name in Ukraine.

That gives Booker an opening, a little more time to make his case. Here’s hoping that angry base voters take a chill pill and hear him out.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.