Amy Klobuchar never had to win the Iowa caucuses. She just had to have a strong enough showing that she looked like she could play at the big kids’ table. Lucky for her, the Iowa Democratic Party botched the first vote of the year so badly that the clock will likely strike midnight on the east coast without a results announcement. Even more fortunate, Klobuchar was wise enough to see the void that her curmudgeonly counterparts left for her.
The Minnesota senator, like every other candidate in the Democratic primary, had nothing to announce. Not one delegate and not one definitive precinct. And yet she went out to her campaign rally, ebullient and effervescent, nearly declaring victory.
“We know one thing: We are punching above our weight,” Klobuchar told her still-cognizant crowds. “Somehow, some way, I’m going to get on a plane tonight to New Hampshire.”
Without seeing the actual results of the caucuses, there’s little way of corroborating the second half of her claim and absolutely no way of corroborating the first. But seeing as the Iowa Democratic Party likely won’t produce its final results Tuesday night and Klobuchar has a decent enough shot of surviving the night, she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by claiming the night as her own victory.
As a competitor for the Democratic nomination understands better than most, politics depend on theatrics, and in claiming the airtime so desperately waiting from tired cable news anchors, Klobuchar won the media primary of the night.
Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden saw their error and tried to cut to Klobuchar’s chase. So, they spoke at the same time, both playing second and third fiddle to Klobuchar’s first. The vote and delegate totals might tell a different story in the end, but for at least part of Monday night, it sure felt like Amy Klobuchar won the Iowa caucuses.
