Amy Klobuchar Calls It A Campaign

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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62 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    Buttgieg and Klobuchar had minority support that might as well be zero. Bernie does well among younger African-American voters and is making serious inroads with Latinix voters. Biden still has his AA bedrock and even did pretty well among younger AA voters in South Carolina. Warren is not so great with minority voters but is worlds better than Buttgieg and Klobuchar.

    My guess is that enough people are freaking out that Bernie can win the nomination this time and want to stop it. I.e they are strategically dropping out instead of what happened in 2016 with the GOP. Whether this is too little, too late is another story though.

    Can Klobuchar be veep? Maybe but I doubt it. Biden knows that his bedrock is AA voters especially female AA voters. I suspect he picks someone like Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris if he gets the nomination. He already promised to nominate an African-American woman to the Supreme Court.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      He promised to nominate an African-American woman to the Senate. ^_^

      But then Biden has been in 26th Amendment territory for quite some time. If he won, within a year or two his Secret Service detail would actually be governing as a team of regents.

      Biden, looking out the window of The Beast: “Where are we?”
      SS agent: “We’re driving back to the White House, Mr. President.”
      Biden: “Oh, are we going to see Barack? I like him. You know, he picked me as his Vice President.”
      SS agent: “No, he’s not there.”
      Biden: “He’s not? Is he meeting with Mandela?”
      SS agent: “No. He’s doesn’t live there right now.”
      Biden: “He doesn’t? Are they renovating again?”

      What this means is that Democrats are either going to nominate Bernie Sanders to be their candidate for President, or they’re going to decide to let Joe Biden select their real candidate for President. And this makes me wonder how much of Klobuchar’s decision was motivated by the realization that Mayor Pete just leapfrogged ahead of her by making Joe Biden and the DNC think favorably of him.Report

    • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Lol ‘Latinx’Report

  2. North says:

    A very strategically sound choice for Amy. Maximizes her odds, minimizes her risk and allows her to return to the Senate with her reputation improved and the gratitude of her party. An unimpeachable decision on her part and another fortunate development for the party. I’m sad the dream is over but I’m glad this is how she’s choosing to end it.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Is today no comment day?Report

  4. greginak says:

    Well well. Chris Mathews just quit. This almost certainly raises the avg IQ and lowers the old fashioned smarm quotient at MSNBC. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass….etc etc.Report

  5. Chip Daniels says:

    From Andy Borowitz:

    Tulsi Gabbard’s Nine Supporters Urge Her to Drop Out of Race

    https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/tulsi-gabbards-nine-supporters-urge-her-to-drop-out-of-race

    “Dorrinson had nothing but praise for the way Gabbard had conducted her campaign, noting, “By not appearing in the past two debates, she did much better than Mike Bloomberg.”

    Reached at her office in Washington, a defiant Gabbard said that she was “in it to win it” and that she still had the strong support of her imaginary friends.”Report

  6. Marchmaine says:

    [Golf Clap] to the Dems for consolidating prior to the Super Tuesday vote… I was bearish on this happening even after March 3. That it happened before? Impressive backdoor wrangling.

    Of course, I’m more interested in the how vs the why… but I doubt I’ll have my curiosity gratified.

    Unfortunately I’m now less impressed with Biden having seen him on the campaign trail compared to hypothetical Biden. Fighty Joe is much worse than Avuncular Joe… but now Avuncular Joe gives off a declining mental health vibe instead of the old-school comfortable in his skin vibe. (if that makes sense).

    Now… if Warren is still in the race to “spoil” Bernie as I’ve seen a lot of smart folks posit… I’m gonna say that that’s too clever by half and will backfire. You still need Bernie’s supporters… and there’s a chunk of them that I’m not convinced will crawl over broken glass to do anything for a Democratic Party that “spoils” another election. Need a Biden/Bernie up or down vote.Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    Beto just endorsed Biden as did Buttgieg.Report

    • Aaron David in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Well, that clinches the Dorkx vote.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It’s a stampede of Dem endorsements, everyone trying to get in early to get in good. I wonder how Julian Castro feels right now, seeing all those cabinet positions filling up…Report

      • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

        OK, how long does everyone think Warren will hold out knowing that the entire party is coalescing around Biden?Report

        • North in reply to Stillwater says:

          I am unsure. To be honest I’m not sure the party actors are pressuring Senator Warren to drop out. She might be of more value to the party campaigning in the field.Report

          • Brent F in reply to North says:

            Warren doesn’t have a next job she wants and isn’t as known for the team concept as the other Democratic senators. The smarter play might be to let her fizzle of her own accord rather than putting any kind of pressure on her.

            Besides, she seems to be determined to throw haymakers at Bloomberg for free. That’s an important service right now.Report

            • North in reply to Brent F says:

              Agreed entirely. If she was kamakaziing Biden it’d be one thing but strafing Bloomberg is God(ess?)’s work.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to North says:

                I could be wrong, North, but I cannot see Warren staying in the race to strafe Bloomberg *unless* Biden includes some of her core policies in his platform. (That is, that she’ll take over Bernie’s role of pulling the Dem establishment to the left.)Report

              • North in reply to Stillwater says:

                I honestly am unsure about Warren. I mean, she has campaign money and the cynical party actors have absolutely zero reason to pressure her to drop out so there isn’t really any reason for her to drop out. Amy in contrast was, no doubt, getting leaned on hard and was low on cash.

                I think our first real indicator will be the next debate. If Bloomberg stays in and Warren keeps leaping on his face that’d tell us one thing, if she starts attacking Biden that’d tell us a different thing and if she actually starts attacking Bernie- well send the EMT’s to my house because I’ll be passed out from shock.Report

        • Aaron David in reply to Stillwater says:

          Warren just got, what, the largest SuperPAC a little while ago backing her? As long as there is money in it, she will keep tilting at windmills.

          It also keeps her votes in play, as opposed to going to Bernie. And as North correctly points out, she is worth more in play than on the sidelines.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Aaron David says:

            Well, certainly that’s possible. Warren strikes me as neither an outright grifter *nor* a Dem team player (there’s a wide overlap between the too :), so staying in the race won’t be driven by gravy-training and quitting the race won’t be driven by promises of a high-profile appointment in the Biden admin. She’ll need to come up with an independent rationale given her increasingly obvious inability to win the nomination, and helping to split progressive votes won’t (in my view) cut it for her. But we’ll see.Report

            • Aaron David in reply to Stillwater says:

              Someone once pointed out (it was in reference to Bloomberg) that as long as there is money available, the potential candidate will stay in the race. While they were talking about how dangerous to the D’s this will be in relation to Bloomberg, it also works for all the others. Pete and special K weren’t really in the race to be pres. and so the issue for them is a little different. My guess with Warren is that her ego is being stroked. “Sure you can still win it, the convention will be brokered, and there is still money” That sort of thing. A Svenjolly whispering in her ear.

              The ego to even think running for president is a good idea is very susceptible to being handed bags of cash.Report

        • dragonfrog in reply to Stillwater says:

          The top second choice candidate among Warren Supporters is Sanders, and vice versa.

          She’s of more value to the Biden campaign in the race than out of it. The cynical take is that the Biden campaign is explicitly asking her to stay in the race to split the left of centre vote.

          (I live in Alberta, where our premier got his position by doing exactly this – so it may be cynical, but it’s perhaps not swivel-eyed crazy https://www.macleans.ca/politics/what-really-happened-inside-the-alberta-ucps-kamikaze-campaign/)Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

          Warren’s out! So, anyone who said “three days” had the right answer.Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    Michael Moore spent some time on MSNBC earlier explaining that this was collusion of some sort.

    The party is, apparently, coordinating in order to make sure that Biden has the most delegates (even if not the 1990 needed) waltzing into the convention rather than everybody being diluted to a number under whatever number Bernie would have had, had everybody else stayed in.

    As someone who thinks that everybody but Yang and Williamson should have dropped out, this makes sense on an emotional level to me, but I think it’s a hair… well, it fails to take into account how, seriously, nobody thought that either Mayor Pete or Senator Amy had a snowball’s chance to come in first anywhere tomorrow.

    Well, maybe Amy had a shot at Minnesota… maybe…

    Anyway, if the Sandersnistas are already upset about tomorrow, that doesn’t bode well for the convention.

    Has anybody done the math for whether it’s mathematically possible for Bernie to win on the first ballot under the new Democratic rules?

    Because I’m remembering 2016 and various commenters explaining that all we have to do is just keep Trump under 1200 or whatever the number was and we can have Cruz/Romney thanks to the second ballot… and I’m remembering how well *THAT* went.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      Here’s a good example of one of the more temperate Sandersnistas who made it across my timeline:

      There are many, many more who are much, much less temperate than that.Report

      • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

        I’d say the argument that Biden is more capable of beating Trump than Sanders rests entirely in Bernie’s reputation is a socialist. That’s it. Biden is a very poor campaigner, prone to gaffes and poor political intuitions re: reading the room; his policies – not to mention his personality – are uninspiring; he has a history of supporting legislation and policies which Democratic voters don’t like; he’s a hard-core institutionalist, so expect to see Clinton and Obama alums (like Rahm Emanuel) getting in line for a slice of the power pie. In short, there’s lots of things to not like.

        The argument is that 1-2% of the independent Midwestern or Arizona voters wil prefer him over Trump. But that strikes me as more of a gamble than a well-thought *reason*. (I’ll stick with my initial take from a couple months ago: the Dems primary motivation in the primary is to prevent Bernie from winning the nomination in order to (as they view it) to save the party. 🙂Report

        • InMD in reply to Stillwater says:

          Here’s a possible preview of the attack line on Biden from Trump:

          ‘They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country, and they’re going to be super-left radical crazies,” Trump told the crowd.

          https://www.thehill.com/homenews/administration/485614-trump-zeroes-in-on-biden-gaffes-at-rally-on-eve-of-super-tuesdayReport

          • Stillwater in reply to InMD says:

            Exactly. A *lot* depends on who Biden picks for his VP, since there is a very high likelihood that that person will become P. And Trump is probably correct to think Biden will pick someone to his left to capture some of the prog vote. Too centrist and it will piss off Warren-supporters, Berners, and frankly everyone else who’s f***ing sick of Dem-party business-as-usual. (I can see the Dem Establishment going full on centrist, of course…)

            Biden clearly faces the most important VP pick in our lifetimes!Report

            • North in reply to Stillwater says:

              I agree that the Veep nod on Bidens ticket is an especially big fishing deal this go round. He’ll never admit it but whoever Biden chooses as Veep will both have a bigger role in the admin than a Veep normally would and also have a huge leg up on getting two terms as president on their own.

              And, yeah, picking the right Veep may be really important for party unifying purposes if Biden does manage to put the nomination away.Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

          The Iron Law of Institutions.

          Also this: A *lot* depends on who Biden picks for his VP, since there is a very high likelihood that that person will become P. And Trump is probably correct to think Biden will pick someone to his left to capture some of the prog vote. Too centrist and it will piss off Warren-supporters, Berners, and frankly everyone else who’s f***ing sick of Dem-party business-as-usual. (I can see the Dem Establishment going full on centrist, of course…)

          Biden clearly faces the most important VP pick in our lifetimes!Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

          I admit that I didn’t see the Beto thing coming.

          The argument is that 1-2% of the independent Midwestern or Arizona voters wil prefer him over Trump.

          That is the argument that made perfect sense to me 6 months ago. I took a 2016 map and just asked myself “which states would Biden win?” and flipped over PA, MI, and WI.

          Now I’m in a place where I’m not looking at WI at all and noticing that Biden is doing a better job of reminding me of Biden rather than noticing Biden.

          And wondering “how in the hell did these guys get hollowed out?”Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

            Beto is a good example of how FUBAR the party and Biden are. Beto endorses Biden to get in on the cabinet-level gravy train (OK, that’s part of politics, so fine), then Biden rewards him by saying something to the effect that Beto’s gonna “take care of the gun problem”. The problem is that Beto has expressed that he thinks the Federal government entering people’s homes to confiscate guns is a good policy.

            “Biden Wants To Confiscate Your Guns” is a now live and on the table.

            All that to get the skateboarder vote in Texas… smhReport

            • greginak in reply to Stillwater says:

              R’s are always going to say D’s want to take your guns away. So there is that. Beto is a popular pol in the land to Texas Toast. Plus he is young. So Biden gets his endorsement. That is a solid win for Biden. You are overthinking it with an overlay of whatever the D’s do is terrible. It was a good get for Biden. All upside for him and sure as hell not just the skateboarder vote. WTF?.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                R’s are always going to say D’s want to take your guns away.

                This is true.

                But when D’s say “I WANT TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY!”, it makes it less about what R’s say that D’s are saying and more about what D’s are saying.

                For one thing, it takes away the ability to argue “nobody is saying that they want to go house to house to confiscate guns” when Beto is on television saying “we can go house to house!”

                And when Biden holds up Beto’s hand and says that Beto will be the one who leads on the gun effort?

                That allows the Republicans to hold up footage of Biden saying that instead of it being yet another example of the R’s saying something about the D’s.

                I mean, good god. Imagine Pence saying that he wants to get rid of abortion and you pointing it out and someone responding “Democrats always say that Republicans want to get rid of abortion”.Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                It’s just a frickin endorsement though. He hasn’t actually given beto anything. Molehill meet mountain.

                Every single thing that happens is not a giant event. In the case of the gun issue the NRA/they’re gonna take our guns away ads are written with a fill in the blank for the D candidate.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to greginak says:

                We’re about to find out if the gun owner outrage meter goes beyond 11.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                The thing I’m pointing out is not a newspaper from The Future showing Beto leading a SWAT team kicking down the door of some gun owner in Oklahoma.

                The thing I’m pointing out is Biden holding aloft Beto’s hand and saying that Beto will be the one that leads the way on the gun thing.

                It’s true that maybe Biden is lying. Surely he is!

                But if Pence says “I want to ban abortion” and someone else points out “Pence said that he wants to ban abortion!”, the proper response is not “but he hasn’t banned abortion *YET*.”

                Or, hell, maybe it is.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to greginak says:

                Eh, the endorsement is fine… it’s the dumb move of “rewarding” him with the 2A Portfolio… as Stillwater says, it kills the “plausible deniability” route. Sure, R’s are gonna say that, but we all know its not true.

                Its dumb because its all downside, no upside… heck, Bloomberg’s your guy if you’re gonna go full frontal on 2A in the Campaign.Report

              • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

                It’s definitely a long way from the days of Biden and his beretta. Not that anyone remembers that sort of thing.Report

          • Aaron David in reply to Jaybird says:

            “And wondering “how in the hell did these guys get hollowed out?””

            Hillary.

            She exerted so much pull in the run ups to ’08 and ’16, flexing her muscles in the party to ensure that there were no serious challengers to her, that it killed a whole generation of possibles.

            Mayor PETE is a good sign for the party. He isn’t running for right now, he is running for ’24 or ’28. Getting is chops boned up, so to speak. Checking viability for his politics. (And this is why he dropped out so quickly when needed. He wasn’t in it to win it. For now)Report

        • North in reply to Stillwater says:

          Sure, but Bernie isn’t a scintillating campaigner or debater either. In the debates the moment people started training moderate fire on him he went red face and started shouting. Do we really think he’ll out-shout Trump?

          Likewise Bernie is running as a fishing socialist. yes a democratic socialist but still a socialist with a giant trunk of genuine USSR and dictator snuggling baggage that has barely even been scratched so far because his rivals don’t want to piss off the Sandersnistas. Do we honestly think that the GOP won’t unload both barrels at Bernie on this?

          Finally Bernie’s model for victory is “political revolution”; he’s theorizing he can excite young normal non-voters from the left to turn out. He’s also theorizing he that he won’t motivate comfortable right winger from turning out against him. His model has been put to the test: in Iowa, in New Hampshire, did we see a great surge of new left wing voters driving turnout to new heights? Do we think that, having failed with months of lead time and gobs of money to conjure the revolution in states with perfect demographics for Sanders, that the revolution will show up in the general election, nationwide, and specifically in the swing states where it would matter instead of the costs where it would be useless?

          Biden? Ehhh I am still luke warm at best on old Joe. His model is pretty straight forward- run as a third term of Obama, a steady hand, a moderate Democrat. Fight back the middle in the midwest swing states; pressure Texas, Florida and Georgia. Without the ’16 purity ennui upon them and with the spray tan incumbent motivating intense turnout against him the Biden model just says they trench warfare to a win. Are there risks? Sure but they’re kind of known risks with low downsides. Bernie? He’s huge risk, huge reward.Report

          • greginak in reply to North says:

            There is no perfect candidate. Everybody has risks. Biden is the safer choice. I’m not sure at any point Bernie fans will admit his plan hasn’t actually worked. Unless we see this giant wave of youth turnout today then one of the biggest guiding assumptions of his campaign has failed. I’m not happy about that, but i’m also not surprised either. Betting on low turnout groups to suddenly go big is a gamble.Report

            • North in reply to greginak says:

              I agree entirely. If Bernie managed to produce the youthful high turnout wave his campaign has been predicting then he’d deserve the fishing presidency.

              I mean maybe it’ll materialize today. It could. This race has zigzagged tons already, what’s another turn?Report

          • Brandon Berg in reply to North says:

            Sandersnistas

            That’s just ugly. Drops the middle s. Sandernistas.Report

          • Michael Cain in reply to North says:

            My question for the voting today is whether Biden can win anywhere in the West or NE urban corridor. I would worry about a candidate who is not the most popular anywhere in the regions that are the core of the party’s presidential and senatorial power.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Jaybird says:

      Democrats need 1,991 delegates to win, while Republicans need 1,237.

      Interestingly, Biden may have committed yet another unforced blunder. The party is positioning him as the electable alternative to Bernie, one who can win over all those blue collar union folks that swung to Trump last time. But Biden just said he’d put Beto O’Roarke in charge of government gun control measure. Beto, you’ll recall, famously blew up his campaign over his pledge to kick in people’s doors and take their guns. So Biden can probably just blew blue collar support right out the window, and Bernie (who Biden keeps tying to the NRA) might do better than Biden will with the all-important moderates and union folks.

      Such potentially disastrous errors are why it’s a bad reason to nominate someone whose mind isn’t quite all there. Biden probably doesn’t even remember why Beto isn’t still in the race.Report

    • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

      I look at it slightly differently. More like whether Biden running smothered the moderate lane with name recognition, association with Obama, etc. This damn thing really started way too early.

      But the reaction is also where I see some reasonable frustration with Sanders who I otherwise sympathize with. Winnowing down is a normal part of this process. Go tell the Pete and Amy fans why they should feel the Bern rather than blindly follow endorsements.Report

  9. Urusigh says:

    Well, between her and Yang there go the last Dem candidates who I actually considered a threat to Trump. Now I’ll just sit back with a bowl of popcorn and wait for it to come down to Bernie vs Bloomberg at the Convention and then the destruction of the old Party Establishments will be complete: The Bush Dynasty is gone, the Clinton Dynasty is gone, The Republican Party has embraced a former Democrat, and the Democrat Party will be choosing between a former Independent (Socialist) and a former Republican, so neither party will have an establishment candidate running in 2020. We truly live in interesting times. 🙂Report