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Broccoli Head of State- What would it mean to have a vegan president? With Cory Booker ......
New Republic ^ | February 11, 2019 | By Emily Atkin

Posted on 02/24/2019 12:32:31 PM PST by dennisw

Pork rinds in Tabasco sauce. Cheeseburger pizza. Well-done steak with ketchup. Most Popular

Cory Booker can’t eat any of these presidential favorites. The U.S. senator from New Jersey, who announced his candidacy for president earlier this month, is a vegan, meaning he doesn’t eat food that’s made of, or from, animals. Meat is off the table, as is anything with milk, cheese, or eggs. So Booker can’t indulge in smoked salt caramels, as Obama did, because they contain milk chocolate. He can’t even eat the jelly beans that Ronald Reagan loved because they’re made with gelatin, which includes animal collagen.

Booker is looking to make history with his 2020 bid. America has never elected a vegetarian president before, much less a vegan. Before Booker, a vegetarian had never even been elected to the Senate before. (He says he switched fully to veganism on Election Day 2014.) There appears to be just one self-identified vegan in the House of Representatives—California Congressman Adam Schiff—and only a handful of vegetarians.*

Some might argue that there’s a dearth of plant-eaters in public office because there aren’t that many in the U.S. overall. Around 8 percent of Americans identify as strict vegan or strict vegetarian, a figure that has remained steady for the last two decades. But that’s still about 26 million people who have barely had any representation in Washington.

Their numbers are similar to other chronically underrepresented identity groups. LGBTQ Americans make up only 4.5 percent of the population. Black and Hispanic Americans make up about 13 and 18 percent, respectively.


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: belongsinbloggers; bloggers; freak; notnews; tbone; vegetarian
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1 posted on 02/24/2019 12:32:31 PM PST by dennisw
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To: dennisw

The world will never know.


2 posted on 02/24/2019 12:33:08 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: dennisw

Isn’t he the guy who beats his women like R Kelly? Who cares what he eats?


3 posted on 02/24/2019 12:34:07 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: dennisw

MORE MORE MORE SPARTACUS >>>>>>>>>

Booker talks about his diet all the time. When he campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he joked that he was campaigning as her VP—or “vegan pal.” He posts pictures of vegan food to his Twitter and Instagram feeds. He serves vegan dishes to members of Congress. He talks about the benefits a vegan diet could have for African Americans, who suffer disproportionately from heart disease and high cholesterol. If he won the Democratic nomination, Booker would become the most high-profile plant eater in the country—after Beyoncé, anyway.

The 49-year-old senator makes a moral argument for his veganism. “I began saying I was a vegetarian because, for me, it was the best way to live in accordance to the ideals and values that I have,” Booker, who did not respond to my requests for an interview, told VegNews recently. “You see the planet earth moving towards what is the Standard American Diet. We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry. The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact.”

Still, Booker has said he doesn’t believe his diet will be a factor in the minds of 2020 voters. “I think people are concerned about what kind of leader I’ll be,” he told The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe last year. “When I go around New Jersey, nobody’s asking me about my personal life.”

Lawrence Rosenthal, who heads up the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, disagrees. “The likelihood is good the [Republicans] will go after Booker for this,” he said in an email. There is “considerable precedent,” he argued, for Republicans using personal behavior such as diet to portray Democrats as elitist and out of touch. A 2004 attack ad against Howard Dean, for example, portrayed him as “latte-drinking” and “sushi-eating.” The idea, Rosenthal said, was to “play into the ‘us versus them’ sentiment (largely resentment) that is the prime motivator of populist politics—the ‘real Americans’ versus the (in this case cultural) ‘elites.’”


4 posted on 02/24/2019 12:34:36 PM PST by dennisw
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To: dennisw

I don’t buy that cory booker is vegan for one moment.


5 posted on 02/24/2019 12:35:20 PM PST by ican'tbelieveit
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To: dennisw

Didn’t we have enough meaningless moral preening from those horrid Obamas? This guy would hector us day and night to follow his diet. Liberals like him always know how you should lead your life and they know it better than you do.


6 posted on 02/24/2019 12:36:06 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Yaelle

He’d have to have women for that to happen

Cory Booker is “flamboyant” ... (not that there’s anything wrong with that)


7 posted on 02/24/2019 12:36:42 PM PST by canuck_conservative
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To: dennisw

https://www.cleaneatingkitchen.com/vegan-diet-dangers-health/


8 posted on 02/24/2019 12:38:19 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist (Trust the plan of the 17th letter of the English alphabet!!)
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To: dennisw

“Around 26 million people who barely have any representation”.
Just what we need. Another splinter group looking to be made “special”. We maybe could lump them in with the flat earthers. They are “special too.


9 posted on 02/24/2019 12:41:25 PM PST by certrtwngnut (4- Do something,,,,even if it's wrong.)
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To: dennisw

Since he has zero chance he can eat his veggies in peace.....


10 posted on 02/24/2019 12:42:29 PM PST by leaning conservative (snow coming, school cancelled, yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: dennisw

God help his staffers. Vegans fart like nobody’s business. Horrible stank too from all that kale, cabbage, and beans.


11 posted on 02/24/2019 12:43:24 PM PST by montag813 ("This is Montag, Block 813...")
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To: dennisw

I make sure to eat lots of broccoli...with my steak.


12 posted on 02/24/2019 12:45:19 PM PST by SamAdams76
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To: ClearCase_guy

“The world will never know.”

Concise and correct.


13 posted on 02/24/2019 12:45:22 PM PST by Da Coyote
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Am reading from an X vegan.


14 posted on 02/24/2019 12:45:30 PM PST by dennisw
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To: dennisw

Oh, like Adolph Hitler? A vegetarian leader didn’t work out too well for Germany (or Europe, for that matter). I do actually know a happy Vegan. Until I met her I wasn’t sure they existed. But then again, her attitude has more to do with her being a Christian than diet.


15 posted on 02/24/2019 12:45:55 PM PST by katana
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To: ican'tbelieveit

I don’t buy that cory booker is vegan for one moment.
////////////////////////////
Now he’s set himself up.

Imagine the laughs at his expense when a tabloid photog gets the first pictures of him in dark glasses and a straw hat sneaking to eat a Burger King Triple Whopper or wolfing down a ham sandwich in the parking lot next to Denny’s. It’s over at that point, like a minister coming out of a house of prostitution at 2 a.m.


16 posted on 02/24/2019 12:47:02 PM PST by frank ballenger (End vote fraud,non-citizen voting & leftist media news censorship or we're finishid.)
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To: dennisw

It’s not his Vegan diet. Booker is a closeted homosexual who absolutely HATES Christians.


17 posted on 02/24/2019 12:47:13 PM PST by SkyPilot ("I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6)
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To: dennisw
To answer the question in general, it doesn't matter if a president is vegan, native american, a women, black, conservative, gay, or liberal so long as they aren't activists who are bent on championing their single issue at the expense of treading the laws and rights of others who might get in their way.

Sadly, of course, it seems that only activists - particularly on the liberal side - are interested in running the country... and they are focused on reforming our laws into their own view of the world... with no holds barred.

18 posted on 02/24/2019 12:48:09 PM PST by alancarp (George Orwell was an optimist.)
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To: dennisw

I could easily deal with a Vegan President, provided he did not try to make everybody else live by the same diet.

You eat from your plate, and I’ll eat from mine.
If Parsley & Tarragon-Soybean Tofu-Casserole appeals to you, then go for it. Knock yourself out.
I’ll be ordering the Tri-Tip Beef plate with Egg Salad.


19 posted on 02/24/2019 12:49:03 PM PST by lee martell
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To: dennisw

Who cares? Booker will NEVER be president.

I do hope he runs though. Few deserve to be part of the coming Democrat blood bath more than him.


20 posted on 02/24/2019 12:55:00 PM PST by unlearner (War is coming.)
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