by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
After losing the White House to the most unpopular president in history, Democrats have lots to say, but even more to avoid saying, lest they expose themselves as every bit as much corporate tools as their Republican foes. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is their ideal spokesperson, a cynical, photogenic and utterly dependable corporate whore who can be counted on to keep the anti-Trump rabble safely inside the Democrats' big stinky tent.
Cory Booker, Corporate Hooker: The Perfect Estabishment Opposition to Donald Trump
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
After 8 years of the center-right Obama administration the Democratic party lost the White House to Donald Trump. Democrats are, as Doug Henwood points out, just as much a ruling class party as Republicans, though they have to pretend otherwise for electoral purposes. The new president is the least popular in history, unstable, thin-skinned and apparently easily provoked.
The Democrats leading the charge against Trump must meet exacting qualifications. They have to be loyal servants of the one percenters, of banksters, hedge funds, charter school sugar daddies and privatizers of all kinds. They must be dependable supporters of apartheid Israel, of military contractors, drone warfare and US military interventions of all kinds around the world.
To boost their party’s fortunes in this new era, Democratic party spokespeople need to be gifted hypocrites willing to pose as advocates of immigrants and champions of civil liberties going forward, even though they unflinchingly supported the biggest deportation and mass surveillance regimes in history implemented by the Democrat who just left the White House. They must focus narrowly on the handful of issues on which corporate Dems actually disagree with Republicans like abortion rights, and not stray to areas which might indict their own party along with Republicans.
And they must absolve their party of responsibility for running an incompetent campaign by blaming the Russians. Hillary is history, but her big stinking tent is still there, and Democrats are crying for a “united front” against Trump, led by spokespeople who can stick to the corporate script.
Cory Booker is a great fit. As Glen Ford, who has followed his career in Black Agenda Report and Black Commentator since 2002 notes, charter school sugar daddies from the Olin, Bradley and Walton Family Foundations and the Manhattan Institute funded his early career. Cory’s wealthy friends bankrolled and promoted a slick Hollywood documentary, “Street Fight” to ensure his 2006 election to Newark’s City Hall.
Booker hired Garry McCarthy, an NYPD expert at fixing stats to head that city’s cop shop, where he oversaw a paper decline in violent crime, with no decline in police brutality and disrespect toward Newark’s citizens. Cory’s millionaire friends created a Sundance TV series, Brick City to promote his re-election and further political career depicting him and his police chief as a new kind of urban superhero team.
Rahm Emanuel afterward brought Booker’s top cop to Chicago where he also cooked the books to make murders and serious crimes go away, and presided over a crime wave on the part of police against citizens that included Homan Square, Chicago’s own law-free black site. The Brick City team went on to make a CNN series for Rahm Emanuel too.
In 2010 on the Oprah show, Booker announced a $100 million “gift” from Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg to Newark’s public schools, whose budget was still controlled by statehouse Republicans, to implement the latest “run the school like a business” nostrums of Cory’s old friends. Three years later, when Booker left Newark for the US Senate there was little to show for the money.
The one percenters take good care of their guy Cory, giving him 3 times the cash raised for all his opponents together in the 2013 Democratic primary, and he takes good care of them. When the anti-Romney rhetoric in 2012 strayed to touch on how the hedge fund Republican actually made those millions, it was Obama surrogate Cory Booker who stepped up on Meet The Press to defend the predatory economics of hedge funds, calling outrage against disaster capitalism “useless rhetoric.” After all, Goldman Sachs was and still is one of Booker’s major contributors. Cory hit the Senate just in time to vote for a major school voucher bill in 2014.
Booker cut a fine figure for a few minutes of TV time next to civil rights legend John Lewis, denouncing Jeff Sessions, Trump’s reprehensible nominee for US Attorney General. In keeping with the hollow symbolism of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which they are both members, the caucus chairman wasted his few minutes of air time objecting to Booker and Lewis being last on the schedule, claiming it was like being sent to the back of the bus.
Cory’s a whore, but a loyal one. If he did for passing motorists what he does for charter school sugar daddies, hedge funds, Israeli apartheid and Big Pharma he could be arrested for prostitution. But Cory’s in the big time, and he’s a leading Democratic spokeshead against Trump. If you’re a Democrat, he’s one of your leaders.
He’s Cory Booker, corporate hooker.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and co-chair of the GA Green Party. He lives and works in Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com
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EDDIE CONWAY: Welcome to The Real News. I'm Eddie Conway coming to you from Baltimore.
