Lisa McCormick says Senator Cory Booker is not fighting for New Jersey

Lisa McCormick leaves no room for misunderstanding when she says Cory Booker is not fighting for New Jersey because he is working for wealthy oligarchs.

"The famous comic book crusader is all branding, hype, and theatrics, but there is no substance behind his bloviating marathon speeches, Capitol stairway sit-ins, and Twitter-centric tantrums," said McCormick, noting that dozens of billionaires have contributed to the New Jersey senator over the last dozen years while the quality of life for working families has been in decline.

“He’s pretending to fight while taking money from dozens of billionaires whose lives are built on a different world than the one most people live in,” McCormick said, adding that his upcoming book, Standing, should be called Grandstanding.

The proof, she says, is in what has happened while he has been in the Senate.

Women lost the right to make decisions about their own pregnancies. The Voting Rights Act was gutted. Mass shootings rose until they were no longer news, only the drumbeat of the week.

Carbon in the air reached 427 parts per million, and global warming made storms grow stronger. New Jersey’s middle class shrank by three percent. Twenty-nine trillion dollars were pulled from the pockets of working people and given to the wealthy. Booker missed 413 votes. Nearly one in ten since he has been in the Senate.

McCormick says this is not a matter of misfortune or bad timing.

It is the result of a long war against working people, carried out over fifty years by the richest one percent, by elected officials from both parties.

"These outcomes are not mere coincidences but the result of a deliberate, long-term strategy employed by the wealthiest individuals to maintain the status quo, where working people in the United States are systematically disadvantaged," said McCormick.

Since 1975, $88 trillion in wages have been taken from the working class by the very rich.

Now, the top ten percent of Americans hold nearly 70 percent of all wealth. The bottom half owns three percent.

“Working families live with less income and pay a greater share of it in taxes,” said McCormick. “The ultra-wealthy billionaires have turned elections into auctions. The highest bidder wins. The rest of us lose.”

McCormick says Booker has chosen his company.

“If he is not pretending, then he must explain why he has lost every fight against weak and clumsy Trump Republicans.”

During a fiery tirade on the Senate floor, the New Jersey politician recently accused other Democrats of being “complicit” in Trump’s ongoing series of constitutionally questionable power grabs — including withholding congressionally mandated funding; gutting federal agencies created via congressional statute; and using the government to intimidate private industry and universities.

“When will we stand and fight this president?” asked Booker, in remarks directed toward his bewildered Democratic colleagues. “The problem with Democrats in America right now is we’re willing to be complicit to Donald Trump.”

Booker is not the first senator to complain that his powerless party had the power to stop the opposition party’s president, if only it had the will to fight.

In 2013, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas delivered an old-fashioned talking filibuster that lasted 21-plus hours, not unlike Booker's bloviating, record-long Senate floor speech.

"Booker's politics are a stage play for the people who write the checks," said McCormick. "The speeches, tweets, and photo-ops tell one story. The outcomes tell another."

The former Newark mayor has been taking money for his campaigns from some of the richest people in the world since his first city council election in 1996.

"The people who fund his political campaigns do not want him to win battles for New Jersey. They are paying to make sure the system stays the same," said McCormick. "And in that system, the winners are chosen before the fight begins."