The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight in the actual judgment of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announced Jan. 27, 2026. The symbolic clock has ever been closer to the hour of human self-destruction. Nuclear arsenals. Climate collapse. Biological threats. Artificial intelligence with no rules and no conscience.
That is what is coming for every American, every Mainer, every child and grandchild. That is what elected officials are supposed to be talking about.
Instead, on Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey looked into a camera and did the bidding of every billionaire who has funded his political career.
Asked about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, Booker said: “Yes, I have concerns. That guy has questions to answer.”
That is not leadership. That is not moral clarity. That is a man who has accepted millions from Wall Street hedge fund managers, from pro-Israel megadonors, from Republican-aligned billionaires, standing on a national stage and giving credence to rumor and innuendo about a fellow Democrat in a race that will determine control of the United States Senate.
Booker—a rootless Democrat and faux progressive—had no opposition in the New Jersey primary election on Tuesday, so he could safely trash the popular Maine oyster farmer in ways he would have never harmed his Republican pals, like former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
The stakes could not be clearer. Maine is not just any state. It is the only state with a Republican senator, Susan Collins, that Kamala Harris carried in 2024.
It is a rare Democratic opening in a midterm election that will decide whether Donald Trump’s party continues to control Congress or whether Democrats finally gain the power to check a president who just used wartime authority to hand $700 million to coal-fired power plants.
And Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is a genuine progressive. An oyster farmer. A combat veteran. A man who has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. A man who has spoken openly about his own struggles with PTSD, depression and drinking, not as an excuse but as a record of recovery.
He is exactly the kind of candidate who might actually force lawmakers to vote against the billionaire oligarchs who have bought the rest of the party.
Cory Booker would know something about those oligarchs. Federal campaign finance records show that more than four dozen billionaires have donated to his campaigns over the years. Michael Bloomberg. George Soros. Paul Singer, the Republican megadonor. Haim Saban, the pro-Israel media mogul. Leon Cooperman. Seth Klarman. Bill Ackman. The Winklevoss twins. Samuel Bankman-Fried, the convicted fraudster.
Booker’s first Senate campaign was supported by a fundraising event at Trump Tower, hosted by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. In 2016, Booker declared on national television, “I love Donald Trump.” He has since tried to walk that back, but the record stands.
And now, with a real progressive threatening to win a seat that could shift the balance of power, Booker takes to the Sunday shows to air concerns about a fellow Democrat’s personal life. About tattoos. About ex-girlfriends. About messages that may or may not exist between consenting adults.
These are not issues that belong on national television. They are not issues that belong in a Senate primary that has already effectively ended. They are distractions. Diversions. And Booker knows it.
What he also knows is that Platner represents something that frightens the donor class: a Democrat who might actually mean it. A Democrat who might vote against the pharmaceutical companies, against the private equity firms, against the defense contractors, against the cryptocurrency billionaires who have spent years cultivating politicians like Booker.
Platner has not taken that money. Platner has not hosted fundraisers at Trump Tower. Platner has not spent a career assuring billionaires that their interests are safe.
And so the machine moves against him. Not with policy disagreements. Not with substantive critiques of his platform on affordability, corruption or immigration. With whispers. With leaks. With a senior senator from another state using a national platform to suggest that a Democratic nominee is somehow unfit.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did not mention Platner’s tattoo in its report. It did not mention his ex-girlfriends.
It said that among the things that can kill us all is nuclear proliferation. It mentioned the expiration of disarmament treaties. It mentioned record-breaking global temperatures and political rollbacks on environmental protections. It mentioned the rapid, unguarded advancement of artificial intelligence. It mentioned the lack of multilateral agreements on biological security.
Those are the existential threats. Those are the reasons Democrats need to take control of Congress. Those are the issues that should be dominating every Sunday show, every debate, every campaign ad from Portland to the Potomac.
Instead, Cory Booker gave air to rumors.
He knows better. He has to know better. He sits in the same Senate that has failed to act on climate, on AI, and on nuclear proliferation. He has the same access to the same scientists. He reads the same intelligence briefings.
But the billionaires who fund his campaigns do not want to talk about any of that. They want distractions. They want division. They want a Democratic Party that fights itself while the world burns.
Booker understands that he is doing exactly what they paid him to do.
His concerns about Platner are not the issue, any more than the metrosexual Booker’s sham marriage or his undisclosed predilections and peccadilloes.
The issue is that he voiced them at all. In a moment when unity and focus are everything, when the difference between a Democratic Senate and a Republican Senate could mean the difference between action and paralysis in the face of catastrophe, Booker chose to undermine his own party’s candidate.
That is not love. That is not the Christianity he cites when asked about Donald Trump. That is something else entirely. It is the behavior of a man who has spent so long at the tables of the wealthy that he can no longer tell which side he is on.
Platner has his own history. He has admitted as much. He has apologized. He has gone to therapy. He has built a life and a marriage and a campaign on the premise that people can change. That is the American story. That is the progressive story. That is the story that billionaires fear most, because it suggests that redemption is possible and that power does not have to be permanent.
Maine voters will decide in November. They will weigh the record of Susan Collins, who has served for decades and accomplished little beyond a reputation for being concerned. They will weigh the promise of Platner, who has been open about his flaws and his recovery.
Maine voters are probably less concerned about who Graham Platner might be screwing than the record of Susan Collins, who has spent the last 30 years screwing Maine.
Her decisive votes to confirm conservative Supreme Court justices—particularly Brett Kavanaugh—drew sharp criticism from abortion rights advocates who predicted the subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade. Despite her moderate image, Collins votes with the Republican majority on 96 percent of legislative and procedural actions.
Collins now faces some of the lowest approval ratings of her career because her political games and fake shows of concern are wearing thin.
But New Jersey residents should weigh the behavior of Cory Booker, who on Sunday revealed exactly what kind of Democrat he truly is: the kind who serves the plutocratic parasites funding his campaigns while pretending to be a moral leader.
The clock is at 85 seconds. There is no time for this. And there is no excuse.
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