For a guy who pleaded repeatedly for party comity during the Detroit Democratic primary debate, Sen. Cory Booker sure did a lot of attacking of his own.
“The person that’s enjoying this debate most right now is Donald Trump, as we pit Democrats against each other, while he is working right now to take away Americans’ healthcare,” the New Jersey senator complained Wednesday. “[T]his pitting against progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here.”
Booker was asked later to explain his promise to “virtually eliminate immigration detention.”
“[T]onight, we are playing into Republican hands who have a very different view, and they’re trying to divide us against each other,” the senator responded. (Note that the CNN debate moderators did not pit the candidates against each other: That is just a right-wing talking point. But anyway.)
Finally, during his concluding remarks, Booker said that he is frustrated that “sometimes people are saying the only thing they want is to beat Donald Trump … [Trump] wants to take all the oxygen out of the room. It’s when we start focusing on each other and understanding that our common bonds and our common purpose to address our common pain is what has saved us before. It’s what’s going to save us now.”
Noble words for a guy who also scored big applause lines after he launched an extended broadside against Joe Biden’s record on civil rights and criminal justice reform. The same senator who complained that his colleagues were being “pit” against each other also claimed every major crime bill since the 1970s represents “one of those instances where the house was set on fire and you claimed responsibility for those laws.”
“And you can’t just now come out with a plan to put out that fire,” Booker said to Biden directly, “And if you want to compare records — and, frankly, I’m shocked that you do — I am happy to do that. Because all the problems that he is talking about, that he created, I actually led the bill that got passed into law that reverses the damage that your bills that you were, frankly … bragging, calling it the Biden crime bill, up until 2015.”
Biden defended himself, of course, by noting the best Booker can say about his attempts as Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, to curb crime is that he got mixed results.
An indignant Booker responded, “Sir, you are trying to shift the view from what you created. There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that ‘tough on crime’ phony rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine. This isn’t about the past, sir. This is about the present right now. I believe in redemption.”
“[Y]ou’ve offered no redemption to the people in prison right now for life,” the senator added.
Don’t forget that Booker also injected himself into a back-and-forth between Biden and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio so that he could accuse the former vice president of trying to have it both ways with his relationship to former President Barack Obama.
Booker would like it very much if all of the 2020 Democrats played nice. Except for him, of course. He is exempt.
