New Jersey Smack Talk: Lautenberg Takes Swat At Booker

The popular Senator takes a verbal shot at the popular Newark mayor:

Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, at age 88 the oldest sitting U.S. senator, said Tuesday that the mayor of the state’s largest city is surely entitled to run next year for the seat he now holds – but he did not yet reveal his own plans.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker likely won’t be the only candidate “drooling” over the job, Lautenberg noted while talking with reporters in Washington.

Lautenberg’s comments on his fellow Democrat’s recent announcement that he is weighing a Senate run came in interviews with The Philadelphia Inquirer and Gannett.

…When Lautenberg was asked about whether Booker was being disrespectful by speaking so publicly about his intention to run, the Inquirer said he smiled and compared the situation to disciplining children.

“I have four children; I love each one of them. I can’t tell you that one of them wasn’t occasionally disrespectful, so I gave them a spanking and everything was OK,” the Inquirer reported.

Meanwhile, over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedershof argues that Lautenberg is too old to run:

He’d be starting a new term while fifteen years older than the life-expectancy for American males.

What are the odds he’d survive in adequate health until 2020?

Low.

Too low to risk letting him try, given the political disruption and discontinuity of service that would result if he failed.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.