Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Booker’s Fifteen Minutes

Newark Mayor Cory Booker went on Rachel Maddow last night to do a bit more damage control after his appearance on Sunday on Meet The Press gave all the internets something to talk about yesterday.

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You knew something like this would happen during the campaign. Well, perhaps not exactly this, but something like it. It always does. It will make a couple of news cycles and then get surpassed by something else, and then something else, and at a certain point — two or three weeks out — Mayor Booker’s moment will be a memory, just like some of the big blow-ups we’ve already seen that everybody was sure would doom a campaign or become the signature moment. You remember them, right? Uh huh. These moments usually have the shelf life of one of those pre-bagged salad mixes you get at the store: fresh for about a day, then compost overnight.

What I do find interesting is that when it happens to the Democrats, it seems to rattle their cage a lot more than when it happens to the Republicans. As Rachel recounts in the clip, there have been some really interesting comments by Romney surrogates that were supposed to be full-throated support and turned out sounding more like damning with faint praise: “Oh, well, y’know he’s not exactly what we had in mind and he’s not the most likeable guy, but hey, whatchagonnado?” Maybe that’s because it happens a lot more to the Republicans. If the RNC is going to make a commercial out of Mr. Booker’s quote, there’s plenty more material for the DNC from the primary campaign by Mr. Romney’s opponents.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks that this is the opening salvo in the Cory Booker 2016 campaign?