One week ago, just as it was true one year ago, Amy Klobuchar was obviously the best bet to serve as Joe Biden’s running mate. A wildly popular swing state senator who had boosted her national profile with a respectable presidential run, Klobuchar clearly could cement Biden’s popularity with suburban women. Those women are the key cohort who sat out in 2016, handing the White House to President Trump but crucially delivering Democrats the House of Representatives just two years later. Klobuchar fulfilled the first rule of running mates — first, do no harm — and provided an obvious advantage with the Electoral College map.

But Klobuchar’s record as a prosecutor, long loathed by the further left lanes of the party, has fully come under fire thanks to the horrendous death of George Floyd after an incident with Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Years ago, Chauvin escaped prosecution in an investigation begun when Klobuchar was the overseeing prosecutor, so Klobuchar is taking a hit even though she already was a senator by the time the case was dismissed. Given the quality of her competitors, Klobuchar could have survived generalized anxiety about her record before the Floyd killing. But now seen as inadvertently responsible for failing to stop one of the most heartbreaking deaths during a pandemic, she is done.