Cory Booker drops out of Presidential race.

Corey Booker. Politico/AP

Senator Cory Booker has dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race and will now focus on being reelected in the Senate. Politico. Booker failed to qualify for the most recent debate happening tomorrow. He also cited the impeachment trial possibly keeping him too busy to campaign. Booker never made much of an impact on the polls with him gathering five percent in his best showing. He also had consistent fundraising problems. President Trump mocked Booker as he left the race.

Really Big Breaking News (Kidding): Booker, who was in zero polling territory, just dropped out of the Democrat Presidential Primary Race. Now I can rest easy tonight. I was sooo concerned that I would someday have to go head to head with him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2020

My Comment:
Some nice trolling from our President there. But I think he's got a point, Booker was never a credible candidate for President. He never got much in the way of polling and was always lagging far behind the other candidates in terms of funding. It's not surprising that his campaign ended in failure but it is surprising that it took this long for him to drop out.

Booker always seemed like an "also ran" candidate. He never really had much in the way of a consistent message that would make him stand out from the pack. Indeed, the only policy proposal I remember from him was his crazed gun control plan that quickly fell from the headlines after Robert France "Beto" O'Rourke stole the issue from him and turned it up to eleven.

I think Booker was relying on his race to try and win. He was one of the only black candidates running but I don't think he realized that people won't just vote for you because of your race. Yes it did help Barack Obama but Obama at least was charismatic and had a pretty clear message for everyone. Cory Booker was not charismatic and did not really have that clear of a message.

This election cycle seems to disprove the idea that the Democrats will blindly vote for someone based on race. Booker and Kamala Harris based much of their campaigns on the fact that they were minorities but it didn't do anything for either of them. And tomorrow's debate will have zero non-white candidates, despite the field still being fairly diverse. I think this proves that even in the Democratic Party that race isn't a trump card (no pun intended) over more traditional assets like popular ideas or name recognition. I also don't think Democrats are buying the idea that they are racist just because they no longer have any non-whites in the Debates. It's a media talking point yes, but I don't think the average person on the street cares.

Booker did do ok at the debates though, so it is somewhat surprising that he didn't see a spike in his poling. Part of that is the huge number of candidates that there were this year, it's hard to stand out when there are 20 candidates running. I also think that unless you are dominating the headlines during the debates like President Trump did in the 2016 cycle, they are that important.

Booker will now focus on winning his Senate seat back. Though New Jersey is considered a safe state for Democrats he is facing a primary challenge. I don't think he will lose either race but the presidential race may have been a distraction for him. I think there is an outside chance of Booker losing his seat, either to another Democrat or to his eventual Republican challenger.