Booker Reportedly on Clinton’s Veep List

Last week, Larry Wilmore threw a bag of weak tea at Sen. Cory Booker when Booker said he didn’t want to run for president — nobody believed Booker’s ambitions stop in the Senate, after all.

Booker may get an opportunity to test those ambitions sooner than expected.

A report on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in Politco suggests Booker is on Clinton’s list to be her running mate if she wins the Democratic nomination.

“The Clinton team knows it can’t campaign with the swagger of presumed nominee, because the air of inevitability was so damaging last time around. That said, some advisers are already privately talking up potential running mates, with Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia dominating the early speculation,” Politico reports.

“Some advisers expect a push for diversity on the ticket. So the short list also is expected to include HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and perhaps California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate.”

Such speculation isn’t entirely new, of course. Last year, the Washington Post ranked Booker fifth among Democrats as potential vice presidential candidates in 2016. Booker’s problem? He’s not necessarily a great surrogate campaigner for other candidates.

“The New Jersey senator is African American, which would help Democrats as they aim to keep up (or at least not lose too much of) the enthusiasm among African American voters that was there for President Obama’s two historic campaigns. If Clinton is the nominee, Booker’s status as a fresh face would counteract the inevitable Republican attacks that Democrats are running a ’90s party campaign of the past,” The Post reported. “The downside of picking Booker is that he’s been known to go off-script and his 2013 special election campaign was less than stellar. Remember the 2012 Sunday show appearance in which he criticized an ad hitting Mitt Romney? We bet Clinton does.”‘