Cory Booker sounds the alarm

| 11:30 pm EDT September 21, 2019
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This month the qualification rules for the Democratic primary debate served to essentially cut the 2020 field in half. You can’t win over many new supporters if you can’t even get on the stage, and the candidates know it. Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out the day she failed to qualify for the September debate. Bill de Blasio and others have since dropped out. Now we’re seeing a different factor threaten to cut the field to even smaller than ten.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is a well-liked figure among Democrats, but for whatever combination of reasons, his 2020 presidential campaign hasn’t gotten much traction. He’s polling at around 3% in the latest average of polls. That puts him in eighth place in the polls, and within a smidgeon of sixth place. The debate qualification algorithm is more complicated than that, but there’s no reason to expect Booker won’t qualify for the October debate. Nonetheless, he announced today that he might drop out soon. There’s a clear reason for this.

Presidential campaigns cost money. Advertising space has to be purchased. Staffers have to be paid. Travel costs are a factor. Donations are a necessity. When you’re polling at 3% and everyone likes you but almost no one sees you as their first choice to be the nominee, you’re not going to get the donations you need.

Cory Booker posted this message today: “We’re at a crossroads in this campaign. We need to raise $1.7 million by September 30 to be in a position to build the organization we need to compete for the nomination—and we can do it—but if we don’t, we don’t see a legitimate long-term path forward.” He went on to make clear that this isn’t just some stunt, and that he truly doesn’t see his campaign surviving if he doesn’t hit the fundraising mark.

We’ll see if Democrats rally behind Cory Booker and provide him with enough donations over the next week to keep his campaign going, and thus keep his voice in the 2020 presidential race awhile longer. Either way, it’s notable that we’ve reached the point where even the candidates who (barely) qualify for the debate stage are in danger of having to drop out due to a lack of money.