The Patriot Post® · Klobuchar Brings 'Minnesota Nice' to 2020 ... Or Does She?

By Nate Jackson ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/61079-klobuchar-brings-minnesota-nice-to-2020-dot-dot-dot-or-does-she-2019-02-11

The Democrat 2020 presidential field just keeps getting bigger. Perhaps they learned an unexpected lesson from the 2016 Republican field of 17 — flood the campaign trail with scads of candidates in order to get various interest groups and constituencies invested in the outcome. We’re still 11 months from the Iowa caucuses and there are now nine Democrats in the running.

The ninth, Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, showed her stern upper-Midwest stuff by announcing her candidacy Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis with temperatures just above single digits and surrounded by snowflakes — and we mean the white stuff falling from the sky, not the whiny leftist constituent. Already the fifth female member of Congress to jump in the 2020 race, Klobuchar believes her niche is the slightly more moderate Midwestern alternative to the brash coastal Democrats pushing the Party to the extreme Left. “We are always going to need immigration enforcement,” she said recently while explaining why she would not join calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That isn’t to say Klobuchar is actually moderate. She cosponsored the resolution outlining the Green New Deal, for example, and she’s warmed to the idea of Medicare for All as something that “should be considered.”

Meanwhile, is Klobuchar really “Minnesota nice” as she claims? Not if you believe anonymous reports of her “demeaning” and “cruel” treatment of staffers. The Washington Free Beacon notes, “Klobuchar’s behavior, which has been an open secret on Capitol Hill for years, led former Sen. Harry Reid to rebuke her in 2015. Klobuchar’s reputation has also allegedly made it difficult to recruit aides for her campaign.” Highest staff turnover rate in the Senate between 2007 and 2016? Amy Klobuchar.

Then again, temperament and character are apparently no longer qualifications for the highest office in the land, so there’s that.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board opines, “As a woman, she ticks the identity-politics box. Yet she doesn’t carry the baggage of Elizabeth Warren (who impersonated a Native American), Kamala Harris (whose zeal as a prosecutor is passé), or Kirsten Gillibrand (whose politics have ‘evolved’ faster than the flu virus).”

Maybe Klobuchar’s message that “we are all tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, the gridlock and the grandstanding” will resonate with some portion of Democrat voters not quite willing to go full leftist.

(Edited.)