Cory Booker by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

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A lot of people thought Cory Booker was The Man this year. He had a good resume. He was telegenic. He was not as profoundly stupid as many of his rivals. I don’t know if Joe Biden pronounced him an “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” but he was the beau ideal of vigorously heterosexual maleness…I mean he even had one admitted instance of sexual assault to demonstrate his brush with toxic masculinity and received absolution from CNN…and naturally he has a sorta hot (YMMV) girlfriend and his campaign floated rumors that there may be an engagement in the offing. Unfortunately, the more people saw of Booker the less they was Spartacus and the more they realized what kind of a pathetic poseur and loser he is and so his campaign never caught fire. Right now, in the RCP average, he’s trailing Andrew Yang (who dat?).

CREDIT: RealClearPoltiics,

This anemic polling has led to anemic fundraising and while you can win the Democrat primary as a poseur and loser (see Clinton, Hillary) you can’t win it as a broke poseur and loser. Now we’re down to crunch time and Booker has told his staff the situation is grim:

NEWS: In a memo to staff obtained by NBC News, Cory Booker's campaign manager warns "we do not see a legitimate long-term path forward" unless they can raise $1.7 million by the end of Q3 — 10 days from now.https://t.co/dofGTa8QF3 — Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) September 21, 2019

Booker Campaign Asks For $1.7 Million In Donations By Sept 30 To Keep Him In The Race https://t.co/tI6XhGDM19 — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 21, 2019

[Booker campaign manager, Addisu] Demissie said the campaign has enough money to keep going at its current pace if it wanted to, but not enough to expand operations before voting starts early next year and that Booker doesn’t want stay in the race if he doesn’t think he can win. “If our campaign is not in a financial position to grow, he’s not going to continue to consume resources and attention that can be used to focus on beating Donald Trump, which needs to be everyone’s first priority,” Demissie wrote. Booker’s campaign has struggled nationally. He averages at just under 3 percent support in the polls, according to Real Clear Politics. He warned other candidates were in similar situations and that the historically large 2020 field “is about to narrow dramatically.” “Booker might not be in this race for much longer — the same is true for other important voices in the field,” Demissie wrote. He argued there probably only four campaigns with the “money necessary to build and sustain the national organization needed to win,” presumably referring to former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, who raised more money last quarter than any other candidate.

I think Demissie is correct. Outside of the four top fundraisers he lists, only Yang has the resources to stay in the race much past the October debate. If Joe Biden doesn’t self-immolate or hasn’t been extradited to Ukraine by then, only people with the money to enable them to compete in actual caucuses and primaries are going to be in the race. He’s obviously trying to open wallets and checkbooks and PayPal accounts among progressive voters, but so is everyone else and when you’re living in Mom’s basement and working as a barrista, you don’t have much left over for political donations after your weed budget is set aside.

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