The 2028 presidential election is still over three years away, but the tracks are already being laid for the Democratic primary.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) appears to have unofficially kicked off this race. In April, Booker broke the record for longest speech on the Senate floor after a rambling diatribe where he didn’t say anything of value. Booker saw a brief polling bump because of this, scoring a 12% result in a Zeteo/Data for Progress poll shortly after. But it’s only been downhill from there, with Booker dropping to 7% as of last month in an Echelon Insights poll, trailing former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Booker, whose 2020 campaign polled so poorly that he dropped out before primary voters even cast their votes, is trying to recapture that magic. That started with Booker telling Democrats to download TikTok on their personal devices so the party could (supposedly) reach young voters. Booker is urging this to get around the ban on downloading the Chinese spyware app for government devices, and because he is convinced that social media can boost his campaign to victory.

In his latest stunt on the Senate floor, Booker channeled his inner theater kid to scream and shout about Democrats being “complicit” in President Donald Trump’s agenda. His inauthentic performance was compounded by the inauthenticity of his message: The bills he was blocking were bipartisan law enforcement bills that Democrats otherwise unanimously supported. The stunt earned him a reprimand from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who 

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