Senator Amy Klobuchar, Running as a Democrat in the Age of Trump
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Until September, you’d be forgiven for not knowing much about Senator Amy Klobuchar. A Democratic senator from Minnesota since 2006, Klobuchar made national headlines over her frank questioning of the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s history of drinking. She then ran for reëlection in November and won by a twenty-four-point margin.
Klobuchar’s opponent was the Republican Jim Newberger, but, like many Democrats, she really ran against Donald Trump. While Trump’s rural support throughout the country is generally quite strong, Klobuchar tells the staff writer Susan B. Glasser that the President’s character issues helped her in rural areas of her state. “You have to go to the core of, what kind of person do you have in the White House that your kids watch on TV when they’re learning their civics lesson and the Pledge of Allegiance?” she asks. “Who do you want speaking to them?”
As many as ten Democratic senators, including Klobuchar, are considered likely Presidential candidates for 2020, though she tells Glasser only that she is “considering” a run. She is adamant, though, that any Democratic victory requires an appeal to voters in the Midwest—a region that turned to Trump in 2016. She tells a story about her husband, one of six children who was often at risk of being forgotten at the gas station on family road trips. “The Midwest was left at the gas station” by Democrats, she says, “and we’re not going to let that happen again.”
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| 1:17.0 | Glasser talks with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. Klobuchar has been discussed as a potential |
| 1:22.9 | 2020 presidential candidate, but she says that whether she runs or not, the party will need a platform |
| 1:28.5 | that appeals to the Midwest if they hope to take back the White House. |
| 1:37.0 | So we're standing here in the soaring atrium of the Senate heart office building. It's the only |
| 1:42.7 | modern office building of the three Senate office buildings. |
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