I'm hardly the first person to note the striking similarities between Cory Booker and Barack Obama. (Whitney Tilson, for example, discussed this connection long ago.) But their commonalities are overwhelming. Both men are black, highly educated, eloquent, inspirational, former community organizers and exude post-racial post-partisanship. (Booker reported going for a run on the national mall this morning, listening to Alicia Keyes and Neil Diamond on his iPod. It doesn't get much more post-racial than that.) And, as with Obama, I can't help but sense that the audience wants to like Booker, is soothed by his soaring rhetoric, but can't quite get a handle on the substance of what he's saying.
UPDATE: Now he's talking about fighting crime in Newark and is getting more specific. The police department's gang task force worked 9 to 5 but "gangs don't tend to work a 9 to 5 schedule." Big laugh. He's got the audience again. But when is he going to connect this to education
