Who Decides, Who Decides? About That Electability Thing...

<Cory Booker: Official Portrait,

114th Congress, U.S. Senate>

<i.>

The Vice-President-of-Something-or-Other stared without blinking. Finally, he offered a response to my question. "The issue isn't who has signature authority, or ever had it. The issue is...who decides, who decides."

"Excuse me? I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from, John..."

I had been trying to determine, for my college paper, if the Student Senate President had the right to sign bills and invoices, as he'd been claiming.

Campus was in an uproar, because this particular president was a left-leaning sort. He'd gotten elected -- along with roughly a dozen friends, most of whom I knew, or hung out with -- and wasted no time moving aggressively on his priorities.

Planning Homecoming celebrations was out; coordinating the Student Senate's response to the US invasion of Grenada was in. This didn't bother me, since I wasn't a Reagan fan, but  our college had other ideas, especially when the newly-minted President asserted signature authority (instead of passing that paperwork to the Senate's adviser, as custom held).

The vice president repeated himself, more firmly this time. "The issue is, who decides, who decides. Follow that, and you'll find your answer."

<Going, Going, Going...>

<ii.>

"Who decides, who decides." That may be the epitaph for Cory Booker and Julian Castro, who recently ended their presidential bids. What started as the most diverse field in memory has, yet again, been whittled down to...surprise! Old white people. They're the ones running Congress, the Supreme Court, and God knows how many other governmental institutions, right?

Now, on one hand, given my own long-standing support of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic and Republican Establishment's worst nightmare, you may argue that's not such a bad thing (especially if you see Elizabeth Warren as your fallback). Yet Booker's and Castro's exits do  raise troubling issues about that E-word that's getting tossed around like so much salad this campaign season: "Electability."

On paper, such news hardly seems surprising. Neither broke out of a polling sub-basement that showed them registering just 4 percent (Booker) and 1-2 percent (Castro), nor did they gain traction from the debates in which they appeared. Cue the inevitable death spiral: lack of coverage equals lack of momentum, and lack of donations (since nobody writes a check to a go-nowhere campaign, right?).

Still, there's something surreal about seeing them drop out, on the heels of Kamala Harris's own spectacular flameout, while Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are ready to press on, no matter how tonight's Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary (February 11) turn out. What's interesting is that black voters, by and large, seem to have soundly rejected them as an option.

Plucky Amy and Mayor Pete are netting zero to three percent among blacks, depending on the poll. That's painful, compared to what the Washington Post showed in a January 11 poll for Joe Biden (48 percent) or Bernie Sanders (20 percent, fueled largely by blacks 35 and under). Warren's total is equally anemic (9 percent), but could well improve, as black voters learn more about her.

Given the importance of black voters to any Democratic nominee's chances, it's hard to imagine how Plucky Amy and Mayor Pete will remain competitive, since young people -- another constituency you're hearing a lot about lately -- don't seem terribly willing to embrace them, either. For example, Plucky Amy polls at zero percent among voters 35 and under, and just 1 percent in the 35-49 demographic, according to a Politico.com story published last month ("'Moderates Don't Excite Us': Amy Klobuchar Struggles to Win Over Young Voters").

If those results emerged from a movie testing lot, the stereotypical cigar-chomping decision-maker would bark, "One percent want to see this piece of shit? Leave it in the can! We'll just have to eat this one."  Who decides, who decides?

<Going, Going...>

<iii.>

But that's not always how it works. Film, music and politics share two major characteristics: merit doesn't always carry the day, nor do the rules apply equally to everybody. That explains the career of stars like Jennifer Aniston, who turn out three dogs for every decent picture they make, yet never have any trouble finding work, because somebody's always willing to dust them off, and give them another shot.

I'd say that Cory Booker and Julian Castro struggled with lack of media visibility, and the idea that both needed white voters' validation before other demographic groups could look at them. Most of the Booker-Castro coverage was decidedly negative. Would they make the next debate? Would they raise enough money to stay competitive? Why hadn't their campaigns caught on yet? And so on, and so forth.

So why not Castro? He served as Obama's Housing Secretary. Eight years of Cabinet experience seems on par, at least, with eight years of Biden's tenure as Vice President. Like Bernie Sanders, Castro only accepted small donations, and wouldn't take PAC money. And, like Bernie Sanders, Castro proved himself as an outspoken advocate for progressive priorities like single-payer healthcare.

Or why not Booker? His background bears a striking resemblance to Mayor Pete's resume. One went to Oxford (Booker), the other to Harvard (Buttgieg). Both cut heroic figures to the public, from pulling a woman out of a burning building (Booker), to serving in the military (Buttigieg). Both served as mayors of contrasting-sized cities, Booker, of Newark, NJ (population 282,090), Buttigieg, of South Bend, IN (population 102,245). Both built deep ties to the tech industry, on which they relied to pad their own fundraising.

Yet one candidate received way, way more attention. When Mayor Pete wasn't lighting up the podcast circuit, he was hosting town halls on CNN, cutting it up on "The Late Show," or sitting on the couch for "Ellen." In contrast, his rivals were increasingly reduced to playing the political version of GoFundMe to get any attention, such as Castro's plea last summer to an audience in New Hampshire: "So if you get a strange phone call, maybe from an unlisted number in the next couple of days, please answer it."

Technically, Booker should have proven no less electable, especially in stacking up his own resume against that of his white counterpart, Mayor Pete. yet the electability trope plays out in strange ways, as She The People's founder, Aimee Allison, told Politico.com: "He wasn’t a senator. He was the mayor of a small town. So if you just compare that, those two things, you realize how the narrative of electability acts as a bludgeon for campaigns who are trying to gain momentum in this environment.” 

Call it the Aniston Effect, political-style. Who decides, who decides?

<...Now Gone...>

<iv.>

Needless to say, I never got to the bottom of the whole signature authority debate. I never found, despite all my best gumshoe work, a single piece of paper that answered the question, nor any witnesses to answer it. The college administration says this, my resulting story read, the Student Senate says that, and both are claiming the high ground. We called it a day, left our readers to decide, and moved on to something else.

The fallout of Booker's and Castro's exit leaves me feeling likewise, now the Democratic National Committee has just scrapped those spiraling donor and poll thresholds that both men blamed for driving them out of the race. if billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer can simply buy a place on the debate stage, as they continue to carpet bomb the country with robocalls and ad blitzes...what's the point of having such rules in the first place?

Then again, as Jeremiah Wright once told me, "What is legal is not the same as what is fair, and what is legal is not the same as what is just." Those words rang through my head when I read Politico.com's wrap-up of Booker's departure, and South Carolina State Rep. John King's response to the now-scrapped thresholds: "“If we have people who are bold enough to put their names out there to run for office, they should have an opportunity to debate. They don’t have a threshold when someone runs against me. They don’t have a threshold when someone runs for governor. They don’t have a threshold when someone runs for U.S. Senate.”

But that's not how the system works, as Booker's now-former South Carolina co-chair, State Rep. J.A. Moore, who notes in the same article that it's designed "for people of color to have challenges in doing everything."

Or, as Moore puts it more bluntly: "The system is designed to keep people that are in power, in power. And the majority of the people in this country, unfortunately, that are in power don't look like me, don't look like Julian Castro, don't look like Cory Booker nor Kamala Harris. They're the exception, not the rule."

Or, if this were a box score, it might well read: Status Quo: 1, Something Else: 0. When that kind of stink test is allowed to stand, it's not just the Cory Bookers, the Julian Castros, and their supporters who end up being left out in the cold. Everybody's teeth chatters, everybody shivers -- and everybody loses. Who decides, who decides? --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Start Saving Up
For Your Debate Stage Slot Now):
CNN: An Immensely Frustrating 
Time For Julian Castro:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/02/opinions/julian-castro-dropping-out-is-a-loss-reyes/index.html

FiveThirtyEight
Why Klobuchar's Strength
In Minnesota May Not Translate To The Primaries:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-klobuchars-strength-in-minnesota-may-not-translate-to-the-primaries/

Politico.com: Booker Drops Out
Of The Presidential Race:
https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2020/01/13/booker-drops-out-of-presidential-race-1250519

Politico.com: How Julian Castro
Got Drowned Out:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/30/julian-castro-2020-president-profile-227985