The Cory Booker affair:

Cory Booker, up-and-coming Democratic mayor from New Jersey says on Meet the Press that the Obama campaign attacks on Romney's Bain Capital years was "nauseating". He later walks this back and is subsequently outraged that Republicans are using his words to help Romney's campaign.

There are many theories as to why he said what he did. Some point to the fact that making nice with the financial industry is good for a politician, and especially one from New Jersey (which shares some of Wall Street's commerce).

That may be the case, but there's another angle. Booker was on Meet the Press, and as anybody who watches the Sunday shows* can attest, those places are The Land of False Equivalences. A guest can be partisan, but will get much more approval by echoing the "both sides do it" narrative favored by the Beltway crowd (along with Americans Elect and Tom Friedman). So Booker, just like a party where the biases are clear, spoke to ingratiate himself with the gang.

* not counting Fox News Sunday which doesn't do equivalence


posted by Quiddity at 5/22/2012 09:17:00 PM