Amy Klobuchar has left pundits and reporters trying to crack the code as to why she enjoyed a durable debate moment after her slogging of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Her fellow former Democratic presidential contenders and Senate colleagues Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey did not experience any sustained benefit from seemingly commanding debates earlier in the race.
Last Friday, the Minnesota senator took two “lack of leadership” swipes at Buttigieg, one on his flip remark about the mundanity of the impeachment trial and the other on his “Medicare for all” backtrack. In the last 7NEWS/Emerson College New Hampshire tracking poll before the debate, Klobuchar was in fifth place at 9%. Following the debate, she ended up more than doubling her support, ending up at nearly 20%, which was good enough for third place.
So why not Harris or Booker? Harris was the star of the first debate, and in fairness, Booker consistently shone in all of them. Unfortunately for Harris, her debate bump in July was short-lived and had been cut by two-thirds before the next one. Booker, meanwhile, never got a bump.
The same thing has happened to Republicans: Think Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain’s second run for his party’s nomination. All of these candidates tried to run national campaigns from the jump — with all of the field staff, pollsters, advisers, strategists, and overhead that go with that.
Klobuchar ran skinny — guerrilla style. So did Buttigieg at first. In short, Klobuchar and Buttigieg wisely invested heavily in Iowa. Everyone who tries to pretend he or she can run a national campaign and not worry about Iowa dies.
Only McCain overcame it, and that was because he went broke early enough, giving him the ability to fire his whole team and establish a New Hampshire town hall operation that required little to no staff.
McCain’s own stubbornness and willingness to keep slogging up to New Hampshire every weekend on a 50-passenger plane from Washington to go speak to 100 people was all that kept him in it in 2008.
It didn’t hurt him that the field withered when Mike Huckabee took out Mitt Romney and Giuliani melted on his own overhead’s burn rate.
The summer debates are like Facebook for a candidate. You might enjoy doing them. You might even have to do them (to keep donors convinced you have a shot). But just as on Facebook, you are the product. The networks sell ads and make money. You spend money to get there with no guarantee you can earn it back: In short, the networks and the existing celebrities are the only real winners.
Klobuchar’s debate moment mattered more for the same reason Marco Rubio’s debate flop (engineered by Chris Christie) mattered more — it was four days before the New Hampshire primary.
It is the debate that matters: You have to stay alive to get in that debate.
Now, of course, the flip side of all of this was Bobby Jindal: The former Louisiana governor had a great Iowa organization, but it quickly withered when he didn’t make the summer debate stage.
Same for Lindsey Graham, who was set in organization and staff in his home state of South Carolina. Sneaking in the summer debates without much private jet chartering and ramping up staff is the needle you have to thread — and Klobuchar did just that.
