Cory Booker Will Testify Against Jeff Sessions In An "Unprecedented" Move. I Wonder Why.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has announced that he will testify against Jeff Sessions’ nomination as Attorney General. Per CNN, this will be the first time in history that a sitting U.S. Senator will openly campaign against another senator for a Cabinet position in such a manner.

Booker’s reasoning is really not very hard to figure out. Before the new president is even inaugurated, he hopes to begin positioning himself for 2020, establishing credibility with base Democratic voters for opposing Trump early on—and reminding those already pining for a third Obama term that there is another young, African American, first-term senator ready to fight for liberal causes.

This on the heels of a New York Times story speculating about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own plans for 2020. Trump won’t be inaugurated for another ten days, and already the sharks have begun to circle.

The question is how much blood will actually be in the water in four years. Democrats have almost uniformly convinced themselves that Trump’s victory was a fluke, and that anyone not named Hillary Clinton should be able to beat him in a landslide. Both Booker and Cuomo are, therefore, laying the groundwork early, catering to every Democratic interest group they can think of. Both likely figure that if they can just sew up the nomination, the presidency will be theirs.

But if so, both underestimate Donald Trump at their peril. I say this as someone who opposed Trump throughout the primary and general election, but I will never completely discount him again, no matter how heavily the odds are stacked against him. After all, who could have expected, on that Saturday after the Access Hollywood tape was leaked, and party loyalists were abandoning him in droves, that he would go on to win the presidency a month later?

It is pure stupidity to attempt to predict the results of the 2020 election from four years out, especially after 2016. Trump could lose in a landslide. He could win in a landslide. But the point is that Cory Booker is playing a dangerous game if he thinks that orchestrating a Ted Kennedy-style smear campaign against Trump’s Cabinet nominees will give him the inside track to the White House. Will liberals in New York and Los Angeles love him for it? For sure. Will blue-collar workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania? Probably not so much.