Just realized watching Maddow last night that Booker is up in the Senate in 2020. I’m assuming the Senate primary is at the same time as the presidential primary, in June? So he’ll probably have decided long before then if he’ll be out of the presidential race and back in the Senate.

re: #301 Patricia Kayden

Yeah. I’m always surprised when Democrats express concern that he’ll siphon off Democratic voters if he runs as an Independent in 2020. I seriously doubt that. He’s not even a Dr. Stein.

The votes he’d be most likely to get are from Republican or Republican leaning voters who are dissatisfied with Trump but not convinced to vote for the Democratic nominee. He does not seem like someone who is going to bring in new voters (which is something Trump managed to do, even if it wasn’t a huge number). So at the end of the day, it’s hard to see how he has a path to even 8% of the vote (Perot in ‘96), and if he can’t get on the debate stage, he’ll lose even more support.