Charles Booker, a Chance Missed

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Charles Booker, a Chance Missed

I’m sorry I didn’t support Charles Booker while I had the chance. I discovered his candidacy only weeks before Kentucky’s recent Democratic senatorial primary. There he faced Amy McGrath in the Democratic race to challenge Mitch McConnell this fall. Booker lost by only some 15,000 votes. When asked how he could have done better, he didn’t see any big mistakes. He said he needed more money. I could have given him a bit more, and I’m sorry I didn’t. Let’s be clear. I’ve never lived in Kentucky and never will. My interest as a progressive is in retiring Mitch McConnell. If there were ever a Senate Majority Leader who got lost so far down in the big boys’ pockets that he can’t see out, it’s Mitch. McGrath is a woman and an ex-fighter pilot—both good things for politics. We have too many men in power who’ve never experienced what they (too-easily) send our “all volunteer” forces to do. Booker is Black and a full-bore progressive. He grew up just blocks from where police gunned Breonna Taylor down in her Louisville home. He joined street protests against police killings and structural racism. All those are good things, too. What made the Booker-McGrath race so consequential was the big question it addressed. Who can better help us take our country back from the oligarchs, the bosses, their bought pols, and the self-obsessed 1%? Is it moderates, who may be able to drag votes from people who are undecided and confused? Or is it true progressives, who have a clear plan to develop a more just, equal, fair and sustainable society? McGrath, who won, is the moderate, while Booker, who lost narrowly, is a genuine progressive. The Democratic party has chosen a moderate in the presidential race, if only to play it safe. But the same questions resound in races across the country. Democrats could, if they chose, give the moderate/progressive question a fair test there, without putting the future of American democracy at stake. In particular, the race for the best Dem to beat Mitch could have helped us know whether clinging to moderation is a viable and necessary strategy or just a fearful cop-out that betrays traditional Democratic values. To have a fair test, you need a progressive candidate who is smart, strategic and non-ideological. You need someone like Elizabeth Warren or Stacey Abrams. They can explain to voters how progressive plans will better their lives, without using a single word or slogan from the last century’s ideological wars. Booker is in that league. You can tell from every word in his interview by Isabella Grullón Paz, published in today’s New York Times [on page A21]. Here’s what Booker said about health care: “I spent the majority of my campaign explaining how a Black person can win in rural parts of Kentucky and how the issue of rationing insulin is not partisan. And so when I tell my story of nearly dying from diabetic ketoacidosis, and explaining that’s why I fully support Medicare for all—because nobody should die because they don’t have money in their pocket—people get it.” Maybe Booker got a late start. Maybe the media got a late start in covering his extraordinary candidacy. But I’m not blaming anyone else. I got a late start in finding out about Booker and in inquiring of Democracy for America, an organization that I support and that supported Booker. All I know is that, if I had read Grullón Paz’ interview with Booker before the vote, I would have switched my support from McGrath to Booker and doubled down. There must be millions like me: comfortably retired Geezers, hiding at home from the pandemic, with little to spend our money on but trying mightily to restore the democracy we once knew in our youths. I know that pols with Booker’s self-evident talents for explaining what matters and how things work, without anger or ideology, are too good ever to pass by.

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