Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., took a take a swipe at Hillary Clinton after announcing her candidacy for president on Sunday.
After her speech in Minneapolis, Klobuchar pledged not to neglect Wisconsin — a swing state Clinton did not visit once during the 2016 general election and lost to President Trump.
“We’re going to be in Iowa and in Wisconsin,” Klobuchar told reporters. “I think we’re starting in Wisconsin, because as you remember, there wasn’t a lot of campaigning in Wisconsin in 2016. With me, that changes.”
Klobuchar, who joins wide Democratic field with some liberal heavyweights, is positioning herself as a moderate banking on turning out voters in capricious states that swerved Trump’s way in 2016, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.
Clinton lost Wisconsin to Trump by less than 23,000 votes. She addressed criticism that she ignored the state in her memoir What Happened.
“For example, some critics have said that everything hinged on me not campaigning enough in the Midwest,” Clinton wrote. “And I suppose it is possible that a few more trips to Saginaw or a few more ads on the air in Waukesha could have tipped a couple of thousand votes here and there.”
“But let’s set the record straight,” Clinton added. “We always knew that the industrial Midwest was crucial to our success, just as it had been for Democrats for decades, and contrary to the popular narrative, we didn’t ignore those states.”
She also dismissed the idea that that was a surge in Republican turnout, instead saying, “enough voters switched, stayed home, or went for third parties in the final days to cost me the state.”
[Also read: Trump taunts Amy Klobuchar for talking global warming in ‘virtual blizzard’]
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to say Sen. Klobuchar made the comment about Wisconsin after her speech, not during the event.
