Cory Booker's Slump: Real but Overrated

[DonViejo]

By David Weigel

The political conventional wisdom machine has put Cory Booker through the Stations of the Gaffe. A month ago, it was assumed that Booker would win the New Jersey race for U.S. Senate in a walk. Since then he's fallen from a lead in the high double digits to the low ... double digits. His comeuppance has come in local coverage, in Politico ("it’s a chance to test whether Booker has a glass jaw&quot , in the New York Times, and now in a Chris Cillizza tweet that tells readers just how damning the New York Times story is:

The Fix ✔ @TheFix
Cory Booker, call your office. http://ow.ly/pyZy3
8:17 AM - 7 Oct 2013

Anxious Allies Aiding Booker in Senate Bid
By Michael Barbaro @mikiebarb
Steve Lonegan, a Tea Party conservative who is running against Newark’s mayor, Cory A. Booker, is reducing the gap between them in polls, alarming Democratic Party officials.

The New York Times @nytimes

As one of those easily wooed reporters who met and liked Booker early (in 2006), I'm glad to see him sweat a little for this win. But he's only sweating a little. In the Times, Michael Barbaro quotes Monmouth's pollster saying Booker should be winning by no less than 20 points. In the RCP average of polls, he's leading by 18. In Monmouth, Booker's gone from a 16-point lead in June to a 16-point lead in August to a 13-point lead in October. At this rate, Republican candidate Steve Lonegan will overtake Booker at some point in 2015.

The election is next Wednesday.

Has Booker's lead fallen? Yes. Most coverage of the Booker slump has been proved by a link to the Quinnipiac poll, which showed his lead slipping from the mid-20s to 12 points. That same poll has shown Gov. Chris Christie increasing his lead from the mid-20s to 32 points over poor state Sen. Barbara Buono. It obscured the fact that most polls also show Christie slipping while still winning. In Monmouth, for example, Christie's gone from 42 points up (February) to 30 points up (June) to 19 points up (September).* There is no coverage of a shambling, stumbling Christie campaign, because the partisan model is reasserting itself, and he's doing what was always likely—winning a massive victory that falls short of the 70-30 landslide Tom Kean won in 1985, when the state was less Democratic generally.

So is the Booker slump real? Read my headline again! Booker's campaign was faced with the choice of defining Lonegan early or blitzing late, and the choice of keeping the candidate on the trail constantly or letting him raise funds out of the state. These were tough choices. Lonegan's probably the most conservative candidate for statewide office in New Jersey since 2001 (he opposed, on live TV, the Hurricane Sandy relief package), but history is full of losing campaigns that erred by attacking their opponents early and raising their name ID ineffectively. Booker has to run again in November 2014—did he want to win a smaller victory with a massive war chest, or a larger one with a depleted war chest?

full article:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/10/07/cory_booker_s_slump_real_but_overrated.html

[tabbycat31]

1. Thanks for reminding me to mail in my ballot for him