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Stopping veteran Dem retirements is top priority for Reid, SchumerBy Alexander Bolton - 11/25/12 06:00 AM ET One of the highest immediate political priorities for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democratic political guru Charles Schumer (N.Y.) is to persuade veteran colleagues not to retire in 2014. Democratic sources identify four senators as most likely to retire: Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Another possible veteran retirement is Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who has yet to announce his decision. But Democratic aides expect him to run...

NEWARK — A behind-the-scenes political maneuver by Newark Mayor Cory Booker to fill a vacant council seat with his choice led to a near-riot in city hall tonight, with dozens of residents rushing the council stage and police responding with pepper-spray. After weeks of jockeying for Rep. Donald Payne’s successor, Booker made an unprecedented personal appearance to cast the deciding vote with his council allies for Shanique Davis Speight, a longtime ally of power broker Stephen Adubato, over the angry objections of residents. "In the absence of a quorum, I have an obligation to sit in," Booker said, though he...

Mayor Cory Booker is known for his social media savvy, having helped direct emergency services in Newark, New Jersey to stranded citizens during snowstorms and field questions during Hurricane Sandy. Now he's taking the talk offline as he bet a Twitter trash-talker that he could live healthfully on food stamps for a month. The Democratic politician got into a dispute with a woman on Twitter who took issue with his dispelling of some free advice via Plutarch. 'An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,' Booker wrote on Sunday morning. User @MWadeNC...

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker delivered a passionate defense of Democratic efforts to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, insisting it's about love of country. "Being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare. It's patriotism," Booker said, disputing an attack line often mentioned by Mitt Romney and his GOP allies. Everyone, Booker argued, must pay their "fair share" at a time when the country is facing the enormous burden of paying down debts incurred by two wars.

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32 in 323 B.C., his once unbeatable army began a 2,900-mile withdrawal from India and headed home to Macedonia. As they retreated, the empire they had created collapsed behind them. To prevent pursuit, Alexander's royal cavalry and infantry dealt viciously with all internal dissent, destroyed cities and burned bridges. The Russians employed a similar scorched-earth tactic against Napoleon in 1812, as did the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It's a maneuver now being employed both domestically and internationally by Barack Obama. The...

When the Obama campaign sent popular, telegenic, man-of-action Newark Mayor Cory Booker out to do a little surrogate-advocacy on their behalf last month, something happened that the Democrats certainly did not intend: Cory Booker made a very public display of intellectual integrity (I know, I know ... a rare beast in politics, but it can happen). On "Meet the Press", Booker said that Team Obama's attacks on Mitt Romney's record at private-equity firm Bain Capital and other such petty campaign tactics were "nauseating" and made him "very uncomfortable." And it felt so good.But the Democrats didn't take kindly to Booker...

Winston Churchill captured what this presidential election is about when he observed “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” It’s why the young black Democrat mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, got high level repudiation from the Obama campaign, including from the president himself, when he insolently suggested that Bain Capital, the investment firm once headed by Mitt Romney, might actually do positive things. Booker, an Obama campaign surrogate, went off script on Meet the Press when he refused to justify a campaign attack ad...

Cory Booker’s comments regarding Barack Obama’s attacks on Bain Capital were, for him, a “twofer.” I think he believes in the system and understands that profits are not evil. He is hardly a full throated capitalist but cannot buy into trashing his benefactors in downtown NYC. He actually believes that private sector money is critical to economic growth. Some of his time at Stanford was not wasted. More importantly, he is a man with big plans, a long range game plan, and the horses to execute. He wants to be POTUS. The second and more important part of the “twofer”...

WASHINGTON - President Obama's anti-capitalism attacks on Mitt Romney's long career as an investor who bankrolled businesses and created jobs isn't playing well in some Democratic circles. Indeed, the Democratic backlash Obama's campaign has been getting about its ads attacking Bain Capital, Romney's venture capital investment firm, is the political equivalent of a "man bites dog" story. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a close ally of Obama and a rising star in the Democratic party, called Obama's ads "nauseating to the American people." Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr., another party leader who once headed the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, said...

"I'm a surrogate for the Obama campaign," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker during an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, "I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity ... I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of the record of Bain Capital, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses."Many a conservative commentator seized on Mayor Booker's pronouncement as a sign of weakness - that some within Obama's camp see the discussion of economic matters as a losing...

In a blistering new ad, the Republican National Committee catches the Obama Campaign lying to the press about their influence in strong-arming Newark Mayor Cory Booker into taking back his criticism of President Obama's attack on Bain Capital.

Newark mayor Cory Booker may have been reduced to filming “hostage videos” in which he apologizes for throwing sharp spikes of reason and temperance beneath the madly spinning wheels of the Obama re-election bus, but the Booker Insurgency continues to grow. Harold Ford Jr., formerly a Democrat congressman from Tennessee, was welcomed to the ranks on Monday. Ford was no small-time back-bencher. He took a credible shot at wrestling House leadership away from Nancy Pelosi, and served as leader of the Democratic Leadership Council - a now-forgotten artifact of an earlier time, when there really were “moderates” in the Democrat...

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat who landed in hot water with his party on Sunday after criticizing President Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital, may have found an unexpected ally in left-wing activist Van Jones. “An urban mayor who nearly DIED saving neighbor from a fire, has earned right 2 demand integrity & courage from other leaders,” Jones tweeted on Tuesday in a message addressed to Booker’s Twitter handle. Booker, who indeed did save a neighbor from a burning building earlier this year, has been on the receiving end of much criticism from Democrats and liberal...

Ed Rendell joins Harold Ford and Cory Booker as critics within Barack Obama’s own party of his electoral strategy of demonizing private equity. In a BuzzFeed article that focuses on the larger disconnect between Obama and Democratic Party institutions, Zeke Miller gets the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania — a state critical to Obama’s re-election hopes — on the record as decidedly uncomfortable with the tone of Team Obama’s attacks on Bain Capital: Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties. “I think they’re very disappointing,”...

One almost has to feel sorry for Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.  He showed up on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 yesterday probably expecting the type of softball questions that MSNBC hosts would toss at him. Instead, Anderson Cooper took a page from Cory Booker's criticism of  "nauseating" attacks on private equity firms such as Bain Capital and kept asking LaBolt how the Obama campaign can criticize Bain while simultaneously raising funds from the same type of companies. The clearly unprepared LaBolt spent the interview filibustering with a flurry of words that were designed not to answer the questions about the...

NBC's Andrea Mitchell says the media has given Mitt Romney a "free ride" by not dwelling on how long it took for his former primary rivals to formally endorse him. Mitchell says the media has always laid off of examining Romney's record and the clash between the elements that make up the Republican party. "They believe that the Bain Capital record is their best argument against Mitt Romney," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said about the Obama campaign. "What you pointed out in your opening segment, and the lead in to the Cory Booker interview, was that the media have not really...

NBC's Andrea Mitchell says the media has given Mitt Romney a "free ride" by not dwelling on how long it took for his former primary rivals to formally endorse him. Mitchell says the media has always laid off of examining Romney's record and the clash between the elements that make up the Republican party. "They believe that the Bain Capital record is their best argument against Mitt Romney," NBC's Andrea Mitchell said about the Obama campaign. "What you pointed out in your opening segment, and the lead in to the Cory Booker interview, was that the media have not really...

A furious Chris Matthews on Monday railed against Cory Booker for his "betrayal" and "sabotage" of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. A bewildered Matthews couldn't understand why the Newark mayor would "trash" the President. Howling over Booker's break from party loyalty, Matthews snarled, "... I think [this] was an act of sabotage. Whatever the intention was, [Booker] was trashing the entire Obama campaign of the summer." The Hardball host then played a clip of Obama "trying to defend himself against what looked like something like a betrayal." [MP3 audio here.] Talking to liberals David Corn and Howard Fineman, Matthews attempted to...

Campaign 2012: Newark's mayor succumbs to administration thought control after going off-script and praising the private-equity firm that succeeded in creating net jobs, unlike presidential investment Solyndra. The White House must have had a bad case of the vapors when Newark Mayor Cory Booker, viewed in some quarters as a practical, non-ideological problem-solver, praised the record of Mitt Romney's former private firm Bain Capital, before a national audience on NBC's "Meet The Press," and eschewed attacks of a type he found "nauseating." "I have to just say from a very personal level, I'm not about to sit here and indict...

That didn't take long. Dem Mayor Cory Booker said this morning on Meet the Press: The Obama ad against Romney is ‘nauseating.’ Bain Capital ‘has done a lot’ to support and grow business. “Stop attacking private equity!”.....Booker tonight: Romney’s years at Bain are fair game. “I encourage” the Obama campaign “to examine that record and discuss it” (Video)