Ever since Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., launched her bid for president, she’s been widely described as a “centrist” or “moderate.” In reality, she is quite liberal by any objective measure.
Klobuchar’s campaign launch has been marred by reports about her rough treatment of staff that reached comedic heights with the revelation that she once deployed a hair comb as an eating utensil. Count me among those who don’t see such anecdotes as having any bearing on her qualifications for being president, as many great leaders have been known to be horrible bosses.
What has really bugged me has been coverage portraying her as some sort of middle of the road politician. Such descriptions say more about how radical the 2020 Democrats have become than they reveal about Klobuchar’s ideological leanings.
Yes, she’s been more reluctant than the rest of the field to embrace teenage socialist fantasies unmoored from governing realities. And she distinguished herself during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight for avoiding cheap theatrics (looking at you, “Spartacus”). But throughout her Senate career, Klobuchar has been reliably liberal across the board.
Despite her image as some sort of centrist, Klobuchar has actually voted with socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 87 percent of the time over the course of her Senate career, according to an analysis of data from Pro Publica’s vote comparison tool. That’s more than she voted with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., who could more accurately be described as a centrist.
Klobuchar has compiled a 100 percent rating from pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL. She has an ‘F’ rating from the National Rifle Association. She is in lock-step with unions — carrying a 100 percent rating from the Communications Workers for America, and a 95 percent lifetime rating from the AFL-CIO (100 percent for the most recent session).
It’s no wonder that she’s compiled such ratings. Klobuchar has voted for higher taxes. She has been a reliable co-sponsor of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s efforts to revive the ban on “assault weapons.” She has staked out extreme ground on abortion by, most recently, opposing a bill that would have required doctors to care for babies who survive attempted abortions.
Even her supposed nods to moderation in her young presidential campaign have been rather carefully calibrated and still place her well in the liberal camp.
It’s true that Klobuchar tempered expectations about some of the targets in the “Green New Deal” and called the plan “aspirational.” But she still signed on as a co-sponsor of the resolution and said ‘I would vote yes.”
Klobuchar has broken with many of her rivals by saying she didn’t immediately support a fully socialized health insurance system, branded by Democrats as “Medicare for all.” She said it was something to work toward “in the future” but just wants “action now.” So in the meantime, she favors creating a government-run plan, or “public option,” that got dropped by Democrats during the Obamacare fight as too radical because its purpose was to destroy private insurance. Alternatively, she called for expanding Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that in their current form are crushing budgets at the federal and state levels.
At the same time, Klobuchar isn’t beyond resorting to dishonest lines of attack in an attempt to play to the base. For instance, she joined Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., in using a report about lower tax refunds to portray the Republican tax bill as hurting the middle class, even though a tax refund has no bearing on a person’s tax burden. A higher refund means too much money was withheld the prior year, resulting in an interest-free loan to the federal government. A lower refund just means the withholding was more accurate.
Klobuchar’s calculation is pretty obvious here. There’s a lot of competition in the 2020 Democratic field to make wild promises that have no chance of becoming law. Because her rivals have rushed to embrace policies that would require a rapid socialist transformation of America, it leaves plenty of room for Klobuchar to position herself as a pragmatist just by being a standard liberal. If she’s able to squeeze through that lane and emerge from a crowded Democratic field, she could have a much easier time running against President Trump. But objectively speaking, she’s still a liberal.
