Maybe Cory Booker crashes and burns.
The press corps could press the New Jersey Democrat about making up and then lying about an imaginary friend he named “T-Bone.” Primary rivals could ask what business Booker had sliding into the direct messages of a vegan stripper from Portland. Democrat voters could revisit that whole Spartacus stunt.
But no matter what happens, Booker had one of the best announcement videos of all time. Of all time.
“In America we have a common pain,” Booker says as a single marching band drummer stands in a high school hallway and lays down a snare beat. “But what we are lacking is a common sense of purpose.”
Conveniently enough, Booker provides the common purpose. At least in his minute-and-a-half digital clip. He has launched his long expected presidential bid with a video that has all the drama of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spot combined with the hype of a Nike ad.
An entire drumline picks up the beat as the former Newark mayor walks through that city’s streets, and Booker tells a version of his life story to a backdrop of collective moments of triumph like the Civil Rights movement and the Second World War.
“I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no is left behind,” Booker says just before the ad reaches its crescendo, and before Booker starts making promises.
He believes in economic security “where parents can put food on the table,” and “where there are good paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood.” He expects a justice system that “keeps us safe instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins.” He wants an America “where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame.”
Booker doesn’t say he can deliver on all of those himself. Booker paints his candidacy as another collective undertaking instead. “Together, we will channel our common pain back into our common purpose,” the candidate says. “Together,” he promises, “America, we will rise.”
It is heart-pounding stuff, exciting enough to keep an audience from worrying about its will-to-power undertones. It certainly is like nothing else any other candidate has put out there.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., has released an infographic that looks like it was put together on PowerPoint. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, D-Ind., has tried to sell Midwest nostalgia. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has struggled to open a beer and apologized to the Native American tribes.
There will be plenty of candidates to pick from, come 2020. Compared to them, Booker is the only cool one.
