The most manipulative, scorched-earth presidential campaign of the Democratic primary came not from the San Francisco attorney who locked up the mothers of truant kids or even the fake Native American who accused, probably falsely, Bernie Sanders of claiming a woman couldn’t win the presidency.
Instead, it was the Midwestern mom who launched her 2020 bid making feeble journalists stand out in a Minneapolis snowstorm and ended it by killing Elizabeth Warren’s vice presidential dreams.
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The moment George Floyd was killed by a Minnesota police officer who had crushed his neck for nearly nine minutes, Amy Klobuchar was fated never to become Joe Biden’s running mate. Despite her seemingly tenuous connection to the officer in question, the national conversation, particularly among the Left, had entirely reoriented around race and police brutality, and Minneapolis became its epicenter. Klobuchar’s record as Hennepin County Attorney, not even on substance, just based on its very existence, made her a nonstarter for a presidential ticket beleaguered by the fact that it’s led by an old, white man in a party demanding diversity.
Klobuchar made the same calculation Thursday night. The Minnesota senator went on MSNBC with a smile and said she was withdrawing her name from consideration as his running mate and, with a dramatic twist of the knife, that he ought to choose a woman of color instead.
Democrats ranging from the insane activist class to top Biden associates like Jim Clyburn have been pushing for him to choose a woman of color. So it’s not the assertion itself that’s remarkable. It’s who it came from and why.
Namely, Klobuchar not only secured a top place in Biden’s Cabinet by twice showing that she put the party over her own political ambitions but also has all but forced Warren to bow out of the race.
The debates made clear that there’s no love lost between the two senators, and Klobuchar plays for keeps. She knows that Warren would drive the ticket leftward, giving fodder to the Trump campaign that’s been dying to paint Biden as a left-wing radical.
Warren hasn’t just been waiting passively for Biden’s decision. Though she’s been a less effective surrogate to the masses than loyal foot soldiers like Klobuchar, Warren’s been holding the sort of high-dollar donor dinners she shamed other candidates for doing during the primary, siphoning money to a campaign desperately in need of it. But more tellingly, Warren backers have publicly organized to coerce Biden to pick her.
By bowing out now, Klobuchar has essentially shamed Warren into doing the same, lest she be perceived as trying to score a victory for white feminism over a woman of color. It’s genius, and we ought to expect nothing less from the woman who bodied Mayor Pete Buttigieg on national television.
Warren’s vice presidential odds are over — that is, unless she wishes to pretend she’s a Native American again.
