2020 Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday to ask the audience for help in keeping his sinking presidential campaign afloat.
"Is your campaign facing a do-or-die moment in terms of getting on the debate stage?" host John Dickerson asked the candidate in the interview.
"It is facing one of those moments where -- and people have responded to this before -- that if you want me in this race, if you want my voice and my message, which is resonating, then I need help," the candidate said in a long-winded reply. "I need people to go to CoryBooker.com and contribute so that we can do what I see a lot of billionaires in the race now doing which is just running non-stop ads to boost their poll numbers. I'm not taking corporate PAC money, I'm not taking a lot of -- I'm relying on individual contributions and that's what we're going to need to keep going."
"I need help," @CoryBooker appeals for donations to keep 2020 campaign afloat ahead of the Iowa caucus and upcoming Democratic debates pic.twitter.com/zqwKhWimbR
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 1, 2019
The Real Clear Politics Average has Booker far behind the other candidates in polls for the first-in-caucus state of Iowa. After campaigning hard in Iowa, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg leads the rest of the Democratic field with 24 percent of likely Democratic Caucus attendees. Bernie Sanders is second at 18.3 percent, Elizabeth Warren third at 17.7 percent and Joe Biden fourth with 16.3 percent. Booker is tied with Tulsi Gabbard at 1.7 percent, about where Booker stands in the average of nationwide polls. The billionaires that Cory Booker envies for their ability to buy influence, like Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, are only polling at 2.3 and 1.5 percent, respectively.
The sixth Democratic presidential debate will take place on Dec. 19 in Los Angeles. The tougher criteria in order to qualify is expected to weed out some of the weaker candidates. The candidates must have 200,000 unique donors and reach a four-percent threshold in at least four approved national polls or early state polls to qualify. Alternatively, candidates can reach a six-percent threshold or more in at least two single state polls in early places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada in addition to the 200,000 unique-donor requirement.
So far, only six candidates have crossed the threshold: Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris and Klobuchar. The polls must be conducted before Dec. 12 in order to qualify.
Joe Biden kicked off his 8-day "No Malarkey" bus tour over the weekend. The candidate will travel to 18 counties in Iowa in hopes of reclaiming some of the ground he conceded to Pete Buttigieg. The South Bend mayor has campaigned hard in the state, having done two bus tours of his own through Iowa.
But it remains to be seen if Biden's "No Malarkey" tour will be enough to help the candidate in Iowa, which caucuses on Feb. 3. On Saturday, Biden made headlines for nibbling on his wife's finger as she spoke to the crowd during the candidate's very first bus stop through The Hawkeye State.