Booker likely will be hard to beat in the Primary (esp in a crowded field)

[Mr. Morden]

Booker seems to be the most likely black candidate to run, but it's certainly *possible* that, say, Kamala Harris or Deval Patrick also run.

In any case, we don't know that blacks will block vote for any one candidate in 2020.  However, it is true that black candidates running for the Dem. nomination for president always overperform among blacks relative to whites.  Heck, even Al Sharpton in 2004, who was an asterisk with white voters, managed 17% of the black vote in South Carolina:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/primaries/pages/epolls/SC/

So yes, one would presume that South Carolina will be one of Booker's better states.

But just because Obama '08 was strong among both blacks and "wine track" whites doesn't mean that Booker would be able to replicate his strength among both groups.  Seems likely that the white Obama '08 primary voters will have other options.

[Mr. Morden]

Thread from last year, just after the South Carolina primary:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=230684.0

[Mr. Morden]

In some ways Booker (at least from a left-wing perspective) would be even worse then Hillary. He'd probably campaign openly and unapologetically on support for TPP like deals....

I'm not sure how that would even work, unless Trump himself totally flip-flops on trade and starts pushing TPP-like deals.

The president negotiates trade deals, and both members of Congress and presidential candidates either support or oppose those deals.  But presidential candidates don't typically campaign in support of hypothetical deals that no one has actually negotiated yet.  I'm trying to think of a single example of when that has happened.....

[Mr. Morden]

Black voters won't necessarily vote for Booker just because he is black. Clinton led Obama with black voters until after Iowa....

There were definitely *some* polls from 2007 that had Obama leading among blacks.  E.g., this national poll from way back in February 2007 had Obama leading among blacks:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022701030.html

And this one from Sept. 2007 had him leading among blacks in South Carolina:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/09/13/poll-obama-and-clinton-leading-with-blacks-in-sc/

But you’re right that Clinton led among blacks in the majority of polls taken in 2007.  More common were polls like this:

http://www.pewresearch.org/2007/08/30/black-enthusiasm-for-clinton-and-obama-leaves-little-room-for-edwards/

that had Clinton leading among both whites and blacks.  But even in those polls, Obama tended to overperform among black voters….in that case getting twice as large a share of the black vote as he was getting of the white vote….though still not enough beat Clinton among either.

So even though, sure, Booker might not outright win black voters, I definitely expect him to do better with them than he does with whites (and we can already see that in the primary polls that have already been conducted), meaning that he’d likely do better in the South than other regions of the country.