ST. PAUL, Minnesota — “Are you trying to say that I’m dumb?”
February’s Democratic presidential debate featured plenty of fireworks onstage in Nevada, most of which involved the fresh inclusion of Michael Bloomberg. While the main event featured the East Coast-Beltway candidates slugging it out with the Big Apple billionaire, the undercard on this title fight got mainly overlooked. One sharp exchange between Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg highlighted another dynamic in the 2020 Democratic primary contest. The argument that erupted between them was emblematic of their respective campaigns’ attempts to focus on policy and preparation, but also tested their shared resolve to feature the more pleasant face of Midwesternness.
Moderator Vanessa Hauc questioned Klobuchar’s readiness in a fairly typical gotcha question. ”Last week in a Telemundo interview, you could not name the president of Mexico or discuss any of his policies,” she declared. “Shouldn’t our next president know more about one of our largest trading partners?” “Of course,” Klobuchar replied, but added, “I don’t think that that momentary forgetfulness actually reflects what I know about Mexico and how much I care about it.”
Au contraire, Buttigieg objected, who noted that Klobuchar’s campaign argument rests on her experience and grasp of the issues. “You’re on the committee that oversees border security,” Buttigieg replied. “You’re on the committee that does trade. You’re literally in the part of the committee that’s overseeing these things and were not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country to our south.”
Furious, or at least as furious as Klobuchar ever appears to get publicly, she sputtered, “Are you, are you trying to say that I’m dumb? Or are you mocking me here, Pete?” Klobuchar then went on a rare direct attack, touting her record of passing “over 100 bills as the lead Democrat in the U.S. Senate” and, in turn, mocking Buttigieg’s own career. “You lost by over 20 points,” Klobuchar said of Buttigieg’s statewide run for Indiana treasurer in 2010, “and I think we should put a proven winner in charge of the ticket.”
Buttigieg returned fire by questioning Klobuchar’s competitiveness — and that of Minnesotans. “This is a race for president,” Buttigieg emphasized by saying it twice. “If winning a race for Senate in Minnesota translated directly to becoming president, I would have grown up under the presidency of Walter Mondale.”
For two candidates who have made Midwestern relatability a key part of their appeal, this exchange offered a brief and ugly interruption to their narratives. However, Buttigieg isn’t wrong: Klobuchar’s “Minnesota Nice” image is likely a barrier to her road to the nomination, and her New Hampshire bump might end up being her high-water mark.
What exactly is Minnesota Nice? It’s not easy to define, but it’s best described as a blend of humility, gentleness, self-effacing humor, and earnestness over irony or pretense. Minnesotans value those qualities, along with steadiness and a certain lack of showboating. It didn’t take long for me to realize the phenomenon was real and not mythical after moving here from Southern California 22 years ago. One small cultural example can be found in Nisswa, a small town on the Paul Bunyan State Trail near the center of the state, roughly 140 miles from the state capital. It’s a popular destination for sporting and outdoor activities, as well as for its local retail trade, which is centered at Nisswa Square. Proudly displayed on the shopping center’s sign in large words is its slogan: “Pretty Good Shopping.”
Not “Great Shopping.” Not “Best Shopping.” Pretty good shopping. That’s Minnesota Nice, expressing low-key pride without making anyone else feel bad about themselves.
Amy Klobuchar is just the latest embodiment of what is now called Minnesota Nice competing for the presidency. Hubert Humphrey defined the phenomenon on the national stage as the “Happy Warrior” during his tenure in the Senate and on the presidential campaign trail in 1968. Mondale, also a former vice president, won the Democratic nomination in 1984, only to lose 49 states in Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection, carrying only Washington, D.C. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty failed to break out of the starting gate in 2011 and dropped out long before the first votes were cast in the 2012 Republican primaries.
All of these Minnesotan aspirants share something else, too: futility at making an argument for president. These are not unrelated to each other and are a direct function of their political success — in Minnesota, anyway. Voters here reward that blend of earnestness, humility, friendliness, and low-key personality. With few exceptions, Jesse Ventura being the most notable, showboating and self-important politicians are shown the door. When Al Franken ran for the other Senate seat in the state, he deliberately made himself boring. He curtailed his national media exposure, focused on policy, and quit telling jokes and pushing the hard-edged commentary that had made him wealthy in print and on radio. Even then, despite his fame, he only barely squeaked by incumbent Norm Coleman in 2008 in a disputed election and recount.
Klobuchar has had no such difficulties in her political career. She benefited from her father’s fame as a journalist, but that was only an initial springboard to electoral success. Klobuchar parlayed a centrist approach as Hennepin County district attorney and that name recognition into three statewide landslide victories for her Senate seat, the closest of which she won by 20 points.
Unlike Franken, Klobuchar’s Minnesota Nice isn’t a strategy. It’s authentic, which is why she does so well in statewide elections here. Having had a couple of interactions with her, one social and one professional, it’s clear that Minnesota Nice is an organic part of her personality, although so is her liberal-to-progressive politics and her lower-key assertiveness in pushing for that agenda. It’s that authenticity of Minnesota Nice that handicaps her ability to compete effectively in the no-holds-barred presidential arena, just as it did for the Minnesotans who preceded her.
Klobuchar finally got her moment in the electoral sun in New Hampshire after a lackluster performance in Iowa. During the presidential debate on Feb. 7, the Friday before the first-in-the-nation primary, ABC News moderator George Stephanopoulos asked the panel, “Is anyone else onstage concerned about having a democratic socialist at the top of the Democratic ticket?” Only Klobuchar raised her hand, but even then, offered a Minnesota Nice explanation for it, avoiding an argument over socialism in favor of shifting the focus away from Bernie Sanders. “Bernie and I work together all the time,” Klobuchar replied. “But I think we are not going to be able to out-divide the divider in chief.”
That moment got a lot of attention from the media over that weekend, and Klobuchar sensed that she had an opportunity to seize the moderate ground both politically and temperamentally. She publicly embraced capitalism on the stump and told CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe that she wondered why no other candidates onstage were ready to stand up against socialism. “I believe in leading, and doing what you think is right,” Klobuchar explained the day before the primary. “And that’s why I raised my hand, because I am troubled by having a socialist lead our ticket.”
That strategy worked — briefly, at least. Klobuchar finished a strong third, with 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, only 5 points behind Buttigieg and 6 behind Sanders. She outperformed the polls for the state, where her RealClearPolitics aggregate average had predicted a distant fifth-place finish. With a fresh gust of wind behind her — and Buttigieg, too, who had outperformed Klobuchar in Iowa and arguably won it — the centrist lane appeared to open up for the Minnesota Nice candidate. Klobuchar reported a $12 million avalanche of fresh donations after the New Hampshire primary, resources that were desperately needed in advance of Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday’s 15 primaries.
Unfortunately, Klobuchar’s window may have begun to close almost as soon as it opened. Progressives began to push back hard on Klobuchar’s tenure as district attorney, claiming that she never prosecuted a police officer over shootings or brutality allegations. That is an old charge that also got new life after her New Hampshire success, but a newer attack focused on a case Klobuchar had successfully prosecuted that convicted a black teenager for a murder.
As New Hampshire voters went to the polls, ABC’s The View host Sunny Hostin attacked Klobuchar for her handling of the Myon Burrell case, which a recent Associated Press report called into question. Burrell was 16 years old when arrested for a murder in a random shooting of an 11-year-old girl, and convicted despite a lack of fingerprints or DNA evidence. Hostin, a former prosecutor herself, called it “one of the most flawed investigations that I think I have ever seen” and then turned to Klobuchar: “How do you defend something like that to someone like me, who is the mother of a black boy, a black teenager? This case would be my worst nightmare.”
Klobuchar seemed stunned at Hostin’s full-throated attack on her credibility and integrity. She offered no defense of her conduct of the case, only calling for the evidence in the case to “be immediately reviewed … the past evidence and any new evidence that has come forward.” Hostin was unimpressed. “Well, you’re a U.S. senator now,” she retorted. “You’re a powerful woman. What do you intend to do to right this wrong?”
“I’ve called for the office and the courts to review the evidence,” Klobuchar replied as Hostin delivered a skeptical look into the camera. For a candidate who spent almost a year on the campaign trail with this issue in the background the whole time, Klobuchar’s passive response and lack of coherent defense do not bode well for an upcoming battle, not against her own colleagues, let alone Donald Trump.
It is most reminiscent, perhaps, of Pawlenty’s retreat in a 2011 debate. His campaign had tried to muscle up his attacks on front-runner Mitt Romney, especially over Obamacare, which had its roots in Romney’s Massachusetts health-insurance market oversight. The strategy, which definitely did not fit Pawlenty’s also-authentic Minnesota Nice persona, had Pawlenty on the stump and on Fox News Sunday in June 2011 calling the Affordable Care Act “ObamneyCare” to argue that the GOP could not effectively campaign on the issue with Romney on the ticket.
When pressed by John King in a CNN debate to say that directly to Romney onstage, however, Pawlenty demurred. That took the wind out of the sails for Pawlenty, who just a few weeks later came up empty on a last-ditch effort at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa and dropped out. “Who is going to write a check to the guy who pulls his punches?” one Republican strategist told National Journal at the time.
That is the same problem that Klobuchar may face with her Minnesota Nice approach, but it’s not the only one. New Hampshire might have been custom-made for a Klobuchar and Buttigieg boomlet. It’s neither Midwestern nor prone to cultural humility standards, but its primary is open to all voters. New Hampshire is a swing state winnable by either party as well, which means that the extremes tend to do less well than moderation, even in primary races. That would explain why two Midwestern centrists finished in the money there while Elizabeth Warren, its next-door neighbor, finished in single digits far out of the running.
A look at the primary schedule ahead suggests that Klobuchar and Buttigieg will find little hope of maintaining their momentum. Nevada’s caucuses are closed and generally favor progressives rather than moderates. Buttigieg finished in a faraway third place behind Sanders and Joe Biden, and Klobuchar barely registered at 4% of the vote. Nor was there ever any indication either would fare well in South Carolina. Super Tuesday has 15 different states holding primaries, but other than Minnesota, Klobuchar and Buttigieg have shown no real polling strength in any, especially California and Massachusetts, two of the biggest prizes. Neither show any evidence of a bump in Texas, where a more conservative electorate and an open primary should have given their moderate messaging and temperament an opening.
The biggest hurdle for niceness is the electorate itself. While claiming to value comity and respect, voters have rewarded anger and aggressiveness. They want fighters rather than peacemakers, attackers rather than facilitators. Neither brand of Midwestern moderation looks likely to succeed in this cycle, any more than it did in 1968, 1984, or 2011. In truth, the presidential prospects of the Minnesota Nice Party seem more distant than ever.
Ed Morrissey is senior editor and correspondent for HotAir.com, host of The Ed Morrissey Show, and lives in Minnesota.
