Amy Klobuchar isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as top-tier 2020 Democrats Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren. Yet, she’s poised for a breakout in the nominating contest.
After stumbling during the Iowa debate, the Minnesota senator is getting enough good news that voters, seeking the most electable person to challenge President Trump in the fall of 2020, are giving her a second look.
Two weeks out from the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 3, Klobuchar, 59, was anointed the New York Times’s 2020 Democratic presidential candidate of choice alongside Warren, 70. Late last week, Klobuchar also broke the double-digit barrier for the first time in a New Hampshire poll, according to a 7 News/Emerson College survey of likely primary voters in the state. She did it again in Iowa with another Emerson poll in December.
From a national perspective, political commentator Christian Grose said the race was definitely experiencing some “Klo-mentum,” but the former corporate lawyer, who later became the chief prosecutor for the Minnesota county covering Minneapolis, still has to “turn this boomlet of interest into votes in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.”
“Her argument that she is more moderate and able to do well in the Midwest will be tested in Iowa. She has been a real fighter in the debates, and she is willing to hold events in Iowa even when bitterly cold, something a candidate from Minnesota is used to,” Grose told the Washington Examiner.
But New Hampshire-based Democratic strategist James Demers, a former supporter of New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 50, was less optimistic.
“It amazes me that the three or four top-polling candidates have basically been frozen in the same positions for weeks. With that many people in the top tier, that makes it extremely difficult for someone polling in the second tier to break out. It’s not impossible for someone in the second tier to have a last-minute surge, but with three or four candidates polling higher, it becomes difficult to do,” he said.
For Demers, the Senate impeachment trial presents another obstacle for Klobuchar to overcome.
“I think we may find some candidates having to unload all of their financial resources on television and other advertising now just to offset being absent on the campaign trail while they do the business of the Senate,” he added.
Klobuchar will join Warren, as well as Sens. Sanders of Vermont, 78, and Michael Bennet of Colorado, 55, in deciding whether Trump, 73, should be forcibly removed from office for abusing his power by allegedly pressuring Ukraine into digging up political dirt on Biden, 77, and obstructing Congress’s investigation into the accusations.
The quartet of senators will be required to be in D.C. up to six days a week for an unknown period of time. While they can leverage their roles in the historic proceedings into appearances on cable news networks, Biden and another leading contender, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 38, will be on the ground in Iowa, an advantage in a state where retail politics is king.
Although Sanders has chartered a jet in an attempt to make a campaign stop in Iowa on Wednesday after a full day in the Senate, Klobuchar is suspected of not having the cash on hand to compete with the second-time White House hopeful, even though she doubled her fundraising haul in the final financial quarter of 2019. The campaigns are due to disclose those numbers by Jan. 31.
During the Iowa debate, Klobuchar used her 17 minutes of speaking time to rip Trump and Republican senators over their handling of the impeachment process, to swipe at her opponents pushing for free college because it overlooks an anticipated trades shortage, and to riff on the issue of long-term care, sharing a personal anecdote. At the same time, she also forgot the name of her “good friend,” Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, when making the case for more women wielding political power.
Regardless, the New York Times last weekend revealed it was hedging its bets by endorsing both pragmatic center-left Klobuchar and populist liberal firebrand Warren.
Klobuchar continues to trail Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Warren in Iowa, according to RealClearPolitics averages. Those four on average pull between 21% and 16.7% of the vote. Meanwhile, Klobuchar attracts 8.3% support. Similar trend lines are evident in New Hampshire, where the senator follows the first four by about 9 percentage points at 6%.
