After years of playing coy, the dapper newsman Anderson Cooper finally officially came out of the closet in an open letter to Daily Beast writer Andrew Sullivan on July 2. But though it came as zero surprise, a few remained undeterred by the news.

I don't care, I'm still gonna make a run at Anderson Cooper. —Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) July 2, 2012

 

When Aetna informed doctoral student Arijit Guha, just as he was in the midst of stage-4 colon cancer, that he'd reached his insurance coverage cap, the 31-year-old took his story to Twitter and found himself engaged in a public conversation with his insurer's CEO, Mark T. Bertolini. He wound up getting full coverage – and making the debate over health care intimate and urgent.

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"Let there be no doubt, I will complete my full second term as mayor. As for my political future, I will explore the possibility of running for The United States Senate in 2014," Booker said.

Booker's run would be for the seat currently occupied by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, another Democrat. Lautenberg, who at 88 is the oldest U.S. Senator, has not announced whether or not he will seek another term when his is up in 2014.

Booker continued:

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But I’m starting to doubt myself, at least a little. Booker recently talked about his political future with Charlie Stile of the (Bergen County) Record, saying that he’ll decide soon whether to challenge Christie or mount a campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2014. (Booker’s second term as mayor expires in ’14 and he has plainly had enough of that job.)

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Booker, who leads the state's largest city, also says he's also thinking about running for the U.S. Senate.

He tells CBS' "Face the Nation" that he has to decide on a gubernatorial bid in the next couple of weeks out of respect for his party and the other Democratic candidates who'd like to take on the outspoken Christie.

Speculation about the 43-year-old's political future has been high for much of his second term as mayor.

Christie has said he's running in the November 2013 election.

As for the Senate, the seat held by 88-year-old Democrat Frank Lautenberg is up in 2014.

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On Nov. 18, the mayor busted out a little Plutarch for his Twitter followers, quoting, "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." Those were fighting words to some who took umbrage with the notion, prompting Booker to follow up: "We pay 4 HUGE back end govt programs: prisons, police, etc. If we invested in Schools, nutrition, etc we’d save $ & create wealth."

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According to PPP,  Christie, who recently filed for reelection in 2013, is beating out all possible Democratic opponents, including the very popular Newark Mayor Cory Booker. PPP reports:

He leads Cory Booker 50-36, Richard Codey 53-31, Steve Sweeney 57-20, and Barbara Buono 60-20. Against Sweeney and Buono Christie actually wins the Democratic vote, something I don't think PPP has ever found a candidate in any contest we've ever polled doing across party lines.

In a hypothetical match-up against Springsteen that PPP threw in there "just for fun," Christie is leading by a 61-25 percent margin.

As for 2016, 44 percent of voters say Christie shouldn't run, and only 38 percent say he should.

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Sen. Frank Lautenberg, 88, also a Democrat, is the current seat-holder, and so far has not announced his plans for 2014. Lautenberg has a 43/36 approval rating, according to PPP, and would have a big win in a hypothetical race against Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

But according to the poll, only 36 percent of Democratic primary voters in the state say he should run again, and 45 percent say he should retire. From PPP:

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Watch:

Via MediaMatters

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Mitt Romney put out an ad Monday using Newark Mayor Cory Booker, along with former Tennessee politician Harold Ford Jr. and former auto czar Steve Rattner, to attack the Obama campaign for its criticism of Romney's work with Bain Capital.  "Have you had enough of President Obama's attacks on free enterprise?" the ad asks. "His own supporters have."

Booker, of course, has become infamous for telling David Gregory on "Meet the Press" Sunday that Obama ads criticizing Romney's Bain work are "nauseating" and "crap." Then Harold Ford Jr., who laughably tried to become the senator from Wall Street in 2010 after failing to become the senator from Tennessee in 2006, couldn't stand seeing Booker getting all the centrist Wall Street love, and jumped in behind him: ”I would not have backed off the comments, if I were Mayor Booker," Ford told his friends on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday. "Private equity is not a bad thing. Private equity is a good thing in many instances." For good measure the Romney ad also scooped up Rattner's criticism – also on "Morning Joe" – from a few weeks ago: "I don't think there's anything Bain Capital did that they need to feel bad about," Rattner told the crew.

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Which meant, naturally, that I only caught about five minutes of looking at the actual stage, and spent the rest of the time tweeting about how ridiculous this entire concept was. Apparently I didn't miss much, either: Piers Morgan, in his typical celebrity ass-kissing way, spent the entire hour talking about how he was the inspiration for Charlie Sheen getting on Twitter (as if that's a positive thing?); for getting Martha Stewart to have her fans tweet her something about pierogis live on the air (technology!) while she spoke about the proper etiquette for shouting out into the Twittersphere (Martha uses Twitter the way a lot of celebrities do: not to interact with her fans but as a sort of message board for her thoughts of the day); and for talking to Alyssa Milano in a fascinating story about why she decided to tell everyone the sex of her baby on Twitter.

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But if you're poor or black or overweight or old or handicapped or depressed, if the world isn't coming up roses for you unless you fight hard, every day, to make it work, cynicism can mean a slow downward spiral to death. Once you've suffered loss or stumbled and fallen hard, cynicism looks less like harmless fun and more like quicksand.

Of course we all like to pretend that our nice things and our education and our highly professional, dry-cleaned existence means that we're above hope, that we don't have to believe in something like the little guy does, that we don't have to help out or worry or lend our voices to the voiceless. But that's all an elaborate game of make-believe.

You may be able to afford the luxury of cynicism now. But when cynicism becomes a way of life, eventually, you pay the tax with your soul.

Another brick in the wall

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Here's hoping that Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker holds onto his newfound rage over his city's crime rates. A recent column in the Newark Star-Ledger lays out the stark reality that has turned this Zen-y, post-race, teetotaling philosopher, Rhodes scholar, Stanford football star and Yale Law grad into Martin Luther King Jr. If he doesn't see progress soon, we may be heading for Malcom X territory. A year into his mayoralty, Booker's million and one grad school-infused plans to save Newark have come to naught and will continue to do so as long as the war on drugs remains a war on the urban poor.

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"I'm going to out-nigger you in the community," James told Booker, according to a source close to Booker.

Booker wouldn't comment about that story, and James could not be reached for his version of events. But that tactic does appear to be a key way James secured his victory, and won his fifth term as mayor last month, by a 53 to 46 percent margin.

With apparent sincerity, Booker still forces himself to remain respectful of his opponent. "I'm the beneficiary of a legacy of struggle," says Booker, "of the people who bled the beaches of Normandy red for me, of the people who bled the Southern soil. Martin Luther King and that generation --- including Sharpe James, that generation -- I am the product of that generation."

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Witness the campaign craziness going on in Newark, N.J., where the race for mayor has become a case study in the nationwide clash pitting reformers vs. the establishment, the afflicted vs. the comfortable, the politics of ideas vs. the politics of dirty tricks, and a new generation of leaders vs. the members of an elite old guard who have outstayed their welcome and refuse to either think anew or make room for those who do.

In elected office for 32 years, and feeling the heat of a surprisingly tight race, four-term mayor Sharpe James has leveled a variety of lunatic charges against his opponent, city councilman Cory Booker, accusing him of taking money from the KKK and the Taliban, collaborating with Jews to take over Newark, being a "faggot white boy" and (cover your ears, children) a Republican. What makes this mouth-foaming vitriol especially nutty is that Booker is an African-American, a Democrat and a Stanford and Yale Law School-educated Rhodes scholar, who, in case you're wondering, is straight and hasn't received a dime from David Duke or Mullah Omar.

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