In a piece on Monday, looking at the “electability” of the 101 Dalmatians who are (or might be) seeking the Democratic presidential nomination for 2020, Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, was dubbed “the queen” of electability.
David Byler, whose Post byline calls him “data analyst and political columnist,” claims to have data (or at least one datum) to back this up. It’s not the main point of Byler’s piece, although the column is illustrated with a photo of Klobuchar. So the Klobuchar buzz will surely get a bump from it.
This stuff is for the politically obsessed only. He took the margin by which each of the declared or publicly-mulling-a-bid candidates won their most recent election, and compares it with how Hillary Clinton did in the same state in her 2016 race against the current incumbent.
Klobuchar was re-elected to the Senate in 2018 by a 24.1 percentage point margin, two years after Clinton carried Minnesota by just 1.5 points. That enormous gap of 22.6 percentage points is the entire basis, at least within the Byler column, for declaring her the queen of electability.
Other declared or undeclared presidential candidates who also ran for (and won) re-election recently (Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Sherrod Brown) are also on the graphic, plus former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who lost his bid for the Senate to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz. All of the senators except Warren won their last re-election by a margin that compares favorably to the Trump/Clinton margin in the same state (or district). Though O’Rourke lost, it was by less than three points, while Clinton lost Texas by nine.
No one else came close to doing 22.6 percentage points better than Clinton. So that’s the whole basis for crowning Klobuchar queen.
Byler humbly and cheerfully acknowledges some of the shortcomings of this. And he doesn’t even mention that Klobuchar faced only token opposition, since Republicans focused on the other Senate race in Minnesota last year. By the end, you might be reminded of the old line that if you torture the numbers long enough, they’ll confess to anything. And, after all the acknowledgments, Byler concludes: “But it’s impossible to explain that gap away without attributing some real electability to her.”
I agree with that (much more modest) statement. But if Byler was trying to show appropriate modesty about what his analysis could prove, he was betrayed (this often happens) by the headline writer, who suffers from lack of space for complexity, who wrote:
“Want to know which Democrats can actually beat Trump? We don’t have to guess.”
(Me: Actually, we do have to guess. But that won’t stop us from guessing. Looking back at 2016, I would say that the assumption that Bernie Sanders was unelectable (for chrissake, he admits he’s a socialist) was a big factor that cost him the nomination. Now, looking back, we can’t help but wonder whether he might have done better than Clinton ultimately did.)
All caveats acknowledged, being crowned electability queen might add a talking point to the case for Klobuchar as she edges closer to what I take to be an almost inevitable announcement of her candidacy for the Big Enchilada.
That two year period between the Clinton campaign and the Klobuchar campaign was monumental. A huge part of her majority was people who wanted nothing to do with the Party of Trump. That’s even more evident in that a neophyte like Tina Smith won so easily.
I honestly believe that, had you re-run Trump and Clinton in 2018, she would have won easily.
Yes, it’s very much an apples to oranges comparison.
And campaign-wise, Smith may have been a back bencher on the varsity, but she faced a B-squader in Housley. Klobs pulling her over the finish line helped a lot too along with a sort of incumbency.
I don’t think that Klobuchar’s “electability” has changed much over time.
According to Wikipedia,
2012 race for US Senate in MN:
Amy Klobuchar 65%,
Kurt Bills (IR) 30.7%
Stephen Williams (Ind) 2.6%
Tim Davis (Grassroots) 1.08%
2012 Presidential results in Minnesota:
Barack Obama 52.65%
Mitt Romney 44.96%
That’s 13 percentage points better than Obama, who WON Minnesota.
As I remember it, the IR’s had a really hard time finding someone willing to run against Klobuchar.
I don’t know if she can win endorsement at the national convention, but she would destroy Donald “Dumpster Fire” Trump.
I don’t entirely agree. Clinton and the Democratic party ran a terrible campaign that has noting to do with Senator Klobuchar’s “electability.”
“This stuff is for the politically obsessed only.”
Yeah, that’s me. Oh, and I agree. Amy is the queen of electability. Anybody who is for Kamala is just a Trump Mole.
There is a night and day difference between Senator Harris and the President. Your comment makes no sense.
You’re missing the point.
Harris would be a deeply flawed candidate (see her record as a prosecutor).
Hence nominating her would be a favor to Trump (assuming that he is up for reelection).
While Klobuchar was also a prosecutor (County Attorney), she didn’t have the same reputation as a convict-at-any-cost prosecutor that Harris does.
She’s also been in the Senate a lot longer.
The criticisms of Harris as a prosecutor are laughable. She prosecuted parents of chronically truant kids, with the support of teacher’s unions (and the law, obviously), and is getting criticized? Please. Her history as a prosecutor is a huge plus to most voters.
We saw the same kind of nonsense a few weeks back when Beto O’Rourke was getting a lot of attention a few weeks ago.
Yes, I have lived and voted in Mn. for many, many years. I did vote for Amy this last election for the Senate and that is where she belongs. She can do the most good for this Country from that Senate position. There are far better progressive candidates in the wings …..Jeff Merkley, Oregon, and Kamala Harris as front runners. B/t/w…….Donald Trump will not be the GOP candidate for POTUS in 2020. There are some intelligent Republicans out there who will not let this impostor do any more damage to their party and to our Country.
Well, whoever those “intelligent Republicans” are, they’re not currently serving in the US Senate.
One has to consider who has the gravitas and stature to actually win in the tall grass, and so far that’s Sen.Elizabeth Warren, despite her stumbling about her indigenous background. Remember, she’s the one who lead us out of the Great Recession with her labor as chairperson for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)–called to that job by then President Barack Obama because of her brilliant work at Harvard, as an expert on bankruptcy. Then, to even help Americans more, she devised the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau that has helped millions of Americans to date. Plus, she has written books to help Americans manage their investments and to preserve the middle class that’s shrinking with each passing day.
Warren has the elements that make for great presidents: compassion, empathy, curiosity, and integrity that’s unmatched by most lawmakers in the U.S. Congress. Plus, Warren can easily fight back against Trump’s silly ways, like calling her names that is disgraceful to our First Nation’s people. So while Sen. Amy Klobuchar is a great legislator, well, she’s not the leader we need now–we need someone with true grit: Warren.
” There are some intelligent Republicans out there who will not let this impostor do any more damage to their party and to our Country ”
Yes Dennis, but sadly there are probably not anywhere near enough of them to beat Trump for the nomination.
If Republicans were that “intelligent” IMO or concerned about “our country”, they never would have chosen him as their candidate in 2016.
He pretty much showed all his many flaws during the campaign, but they voted for him anyway – overwhelmingly.
The only slim hope for him not being the repub candidate in 2020 is if Meuller comes back with charges and information so damaging that even a deeply ethically and morally challenged Republican party can’t ignore it, as they have pretty much done so far.
“Donald Trump will not be the GOP candidate for POTUS in 2020. There are some intelligent Republicans out there who will not let this impostor do any more damage to their party and to our Country.”
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1091879846257381376
You might wanna rethink that statement
I hope senator Klobuchar will discover what Ted Kennedy learned, only sooner, that some people belong in the Senate, rather than in the White House. There, she can do the most good for Minnesota and the nation and the world.
My, how times change. June – it seems SO far away at the moment – will mark my 10th year in Minnesota, and a decade ago, I’d never have guessed that the most talked about (at the moment) Democratic candidates for the presidency would be three female Senators. I don’t even know if there WERE three female U.S. Senators a decade ago. The very fact that the very capable, if elderly (he’s 2 years older than I am), Joe Biden is usually mentioned as a sort of afterthought is an interesting sign of changing times all by itself. He hasn’t committed to the race yet, but spent decades in the Senate, 8 years as Vice-President, and on paper, at least, is as qualified as anyone who’s ever run for the presidency, yet the trio of female senators are currently getting far more attention.
I have no idea if Amy Klobuchar is “electable” on a national scale. She obviously is in the region. Much the same could be said of both Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Of the three, my take is that Warren has the larger national following, but whether that following will grow enough to make her the first female president isn’t as obvious to me as is her regional popularity in New England. If age is a factor with Biden, it’s worth pointing out that Warren is 69, Klobuchar is 58, and Harris is 54.
And we’re still more than a year away from primary season, so there’s plenty of time for more candidates to put their collective toes in the political waters. I just hope the Dems can avoid their too-frequent circular firing squad, and remember that the goal is, and will be, to remove the current badly-educated spoiled child from the Oval Office.
Your assessment seems valid–my problem is ageism. If a person is healthy, well, they can serve well–be that age 54 or 77 (Biden). What we dare not due is get excited over someone like Beto: substance and thorough vetting do matter for the long haul. No one did much vetting when it came to our current president; the news media and politicos got way too caught up in his wealth and salesmanship–not to mention the warnings about Russia interference in our elections! So we get what we deserve, and we must do better this round for our planet.
I don’t know if Klobuchar is exciting/progressive enough to get through the Democratic primaries. But she is pretty much baggage free and would clean Trump’s clock in a general election.
Yes, I think the sad thing for both parties is that who can win and who can win the general election are often two VERY different things.
Those who are close to the right or the left edge tell people a bunch of BS that they want to hear, I say BS because it probably has very little chance of actually being enacted into law, and so they tend to win the primary.
Tell the people what they want to hear is the best political adage of all time probably (in terms of it ‘working’ in winning).
But if the centrist bulk of the voting electorate isn’t in favor of the edge policies, the message and candidate that worked to win the primary is probably not a good way to win a general election.
I think Amy would have a very good chance of winning against Trump, but people on the left edge in the Democratic party might not want a moderate or centrist, they want to go from neo-fascism under Trump to socialism in one election cycle – but I don’t think it usually works that way.
To be successful, large changes like that are usually carried out in stages and steps I think.
If I were on the left edge, I’d be supporting a moderate like Amy, and then once she won, trying to steer the party and the electorate further left over time.
First mission though is to BEAT Trump and convincingly, not by a cliff-hanger because the Democrats chose someone not that appealing to the center block of voters.
I think the goal, to be successful, would to be to try to move the political ‘center’ further left over time, because you can’t win many elections at all if you don’t pull the huge block of votes somewhat closer to that center.
So over time, you gain influence by winning over and over, by appealing to a center of political mass that is evolving leftwards in stages.
Oh please, quit with the bothsiderism. Considering HRC, Obama, Kerry, Gore, and Bill Clinton, none of them, in any way, did anything in the primaries and caucuses to cater to any sort of left wing.
Everyone one them were corporate Dems who in no way, shape, or form challenged Wall Street,or even proposed a decent raise in the minimum wage.
Agree, Sean, that’s why I back Sen. Warren–she’s not afraid to confront Wall Street’s ilk nor does she view herself as ‘elite’ as the others do!
the labels that we apply to our politicians are quite interesting… Writers above chastise “moderate” Obama and Clinton because they wouldn’t challenge Wall Street. then apply the same label to Klobuchar. I don’t remember EVER hearing that she was soft on Wall Street. I think she would be a wonderful President, and may be uniquely qualified to undo much of the damage done by “Dumpster fire” Donnie. Amy Klobuchar has done much good for us while in the US Senate. She has sought solutions to problems faced by real people. She Has NOT used her position as a platform for demagoguery. She is not from a background of wealth and privilege. She can relate to the real problems faced by average people.
I like Amy as a senator. I hope she doesn’t run for president though.
Klobuchar strikes me as the kind of centrist who comforts the risk-averse voter. She would be popular with the punditocracy, but to the right of where the bulk of Americans are on actual policy issues.
But to the left of any Republican candidate.
Elections are won by capturing the middle, not the fringes.
“Elections are won by capturing the middle, not the fringes.”
Ummm… Donald Trump represents the middle? We’re doomed…
Trump, as we have found out, is not acting as a centrist (although most of what he has actually done is less extreme than his rhetoric).
However, he was elected by the votes of Democrats and Obama Republicans who were not comfortable with Clinton, and who either voted for Trump or stayed home. Those were the centrists.
Democrats lose elections by running as GOP-Lite, a vain attempt to capture the very few real swing voters while offering your own base nothing.
Nope. 100 percent wrong. Completely backwards. Democrats win elections by winning over the center, and that usually means running moderates (GOP lite, corporate dems, etc. in your parlance). While the liberals in the house (AOC, Omar, etc) get the attention, they got elected from safe seats. The seats that won us the House were in suburban swing districts and won by moderates. We would have picked up a few more seats if we hadn’t run leftist candidates (i.e. Eastman in Nebraska) instead of moderates.
I keep saying it – there is this fantasy among some liberals that America is secretly progressive. I wish it was, but it just isn’t.
“Moderate” Klobuchar runs unopposed in the primary and wins by a comfortable margin in the general.
“Corporate” Tina Smith crushes “progressive” Painter in the primary by 62%, stomps Housley by 11%
“Centrists” Walz and Swanson combine for 68% in the primary then Walz goes on to crush Johnson in the general
“Progressive” Keith Ellison gets 49% in a primary against a bunch of no names, then almost loses the general against an extremist nutjob who was supposed to be the sacrificial lamb against Swanson.
I’m noticing a trend here.
And let’s not forget that Phillips and Craig explicitly rejected M4A and unseated incumbents whereas Radinovich embraced it and ended up losing by 6%
Everything I’m reading is saying the same thing, whoever they elect will need the “wow” factor. As in Beto O’Rourke and Obama. I think Kamala Harris has it for sure, nobody else except her and Beto at the moment.
But what a sad commentary on our society: boring old Minnesota politicians don’t have a chance. Amy would be an awesome candidate. Here’s to hoping peeps come to their senses and elect the most qualified person, not the shining object
I think that Harris in particular, or Warren or Klobuchar as VP candidates would add power to a ticket headed by someone like Brown, Biden or Hickenlooper. I’d worry about a ticket led by Harris or especially Warren, and about a Klobuchar candidacy unless she were accompanied by someone like O’Rourke..
And I’m already quite worried about the possible entry of Schultz as an independent.
I’m worried about Schultz too David.. I have to admit I completely enjoyed watching the clip of him being heckled.
Here we are, with the most unhinged and in my mind treasonous (because of all the Russia ties) president perhaps of the last 150 years, and this Schultz thinks it’s a good idea to be another Ralph Nader to Al Gore, or Jill Stein to Hillary Clinton?
Get over yourself egotistical billionaire, you’re not going to win, all you’re going to do is potentially help Trump get another 4 years.
If we had ‘ranked’ elections, where you could vote for one candidate, but if they didn’t win, your vote goes to another candidate, then I’d be fine with Schultz running, but we don’t have that system now, and we desperately need to get Trump out of the White house, by either a good size loss in the 2020 election, or an impeachment if Mueller has found material strong enough to move even the republicans to want to toss him out.
There is no need to enable candidates like HRC by blaming Jill Stein. When HRC’s numbers in Michigan went DOWN when she campaigned there, was that Stein’s fault?
When HRC would only “campaign” before tightly controlled small groups of supporters, was that Stein’s fault?
When HRC only tepidly and reluctantly endorsed a $12/hr minimum wage, was that Stein’s fault too?
Stop making excuses for a bad candidate who made thousands giving secret speeches to Wall Street and refused to say what she spoke about. That was not the fault of Stein, Or Sanders, or anyone but her and her lousy top down campaign.
Clinton was not a great candidate by any means, but you certainly can blame a so-called leftist third-party candidate for helping elect a Republican president.
Bernie Sanders also ran perhaps the most dishonest and negative primary campaign ever against her, so I think he can be blamed as well.
In any other year, I’d say Klobs doesn’t have a chance in the general election. But the way it’s shaping up, it’s starting to look like just about any Dem could win in 2020, sort of like 2008 when the economy was sliding into recession.
It’s early, but then the die may be cast earlier than normal this time. Rather than taking a lesson from the mid terms a la Reagan, Clinton, and Obama, Don Trump has doubled down on his small base, and doubled down on stupid with the recent shutdown. His numbers may bounce back to where they were (which weren’t great), but he may also be at a turning point, where is act is wearing thin. SOmeone more well versed in polls than I could tell us of what significance it is, but in a recent poll 57% said “anyone but Don Trump”. That does nor bode well for Individual 1.
As much as I like Brown & Biden, they or not what we need. Dems need to nominate someone looking to the future. Think JFK, BHO, WJC. Or GWB for that matter. Let the repubs be the party of looking backwards.
Having said that, Beto seems a little light on experience. It was fun to watch him take on, & nearly take out, Cruz; but that’s not necessarily indicative of good potential as president.
So you’re thinking of three women who would “add power” to a ticket headed by any one of three men.
She is just bland enough to appeal t many.
The fact that Klobuchar did not have any real opposition may simply mean that the Republicans drew the obvious conclusion: she was going to win no matter who they ran, so nominate cannon fodder with no political future worth wasting.
And I doubt that Sanders would have done nearly as well as Clinton. Remember, she got over three million votes more than Trump.
Sanders was a one trick pony with numbers that didn’t add up, and little to say beyond ‘I’m a Social Democrat’ (and more Social than Democrat). Anything that he gained on the Left he would have lost in the Middle.
Aside from her “Kavanaugh Moment” no one outside of her home state of Minnesota even knows about her. She is cautiously very quiet.
Aside from her “Kavanaugh Moment” no one outside of her home state of Minnesota even knows about her. She is cautiously very quiet. Most media correspondents cannot even pronounce her name correctly.
Dream on Klobuchar P.R. team! AK will NEVER be elected president–will never even have a hair-of-a-chance at the nomination. Not in a thousand years.
She still skipped the town hall meeting in Becker and gave the stage away to Newberger for the day. Which just reaffirms what most people in Becker already know: nobody in the Twin Cities thinks the trip up here is worth it.
Becker has a population of about 4600.
The Twin Cities metro area has a population of over 3,000,000.
Where do you think she should spend her resources?
I guess it might not make sense from a numbers perspective, but this is Jim’s home turf, he has 3 kids in Becker. Add in an anxiety about the closing coal plant (literally across the street from the meeting) and expanding commuter rail, and I think it could have been an good debate. I was disappointed.
Oh come on, Mr. Newberger ran an unserious campaign based on tribal politics, and he offered no solutions. He ran on protecting Trump, instead of taking a serious analysis of what a senator should actually do. It’s sad because I wish we had more Republicans who weren’t hyper-partisan and had serious ideas instead of coddling the president’s insecurities. It’s not serious to have Mr. Newberger as a candidate who claimed that the sun was causing climate change at the debate at the State Fair. It’s embarrassing that this man can actually hold public office.
I think anyone running for statewide office in Minnesota ought to go to Becker, Echo, Warroad and Duluth, as well as campaign in the Metro area and southern Minnesota!
38 percent of them voted for her anyway.
I’m a Canadian. I follow American politics closely because they are so important. I selected Sen Klobuchar as my favourite presidential candidate a month age because she’s a moderate liberal and has a non-threatening manner that will be more acceptable to male voters than many female Dems. I do think Klobuchar should drift a bit more to “the left” by endorsing a gradual extension of Medicare to lower age groups at a rate that will not drastically increase taxes. I’d start with those younger than 18 because their healthcare costs are the lowest. We have BASIC tax-paid healthcare in Canada – upon which private coverage can be superimposed/
I have doubts about the appeal of Klobuchar outside MN. Supposedly she could be the candidate capable of connecting with the voters she said Democrats left behind two years ago. Now reluctant Trump voters did not vote for him because he’s a centrist, “reach-across-the-isle” kind of politician. These voters wanted a populist that will change the status quo. Klobuchar is not that. Neither is Trump which is why he won’t be re-elected.
Humphrey and Mondale showed similar prowess in Minnesota but fell short nationally. I would be interested in how Klobuchar might break out of that pattern.
Klobuchar released a proposal yesterday (tax-advantaged accounts for career training) that shows exactly why some people doubt her. Instead of doing something simple, like expanding the types of career training that is tax deductible, we instead get yet another siloed tax-free account (to add to the ones we already have for health care, child/dependent care, K-12 education, college education, retirement, etc.) that you can’t move money between easily or without penalty and which functionally serves as a tax cut for the rich.
I guess the only real question here is whether or not this “dubbing” comes from those who put HRC instead of Sanders on the ballot? I’m not saying Kobuchar isn’t “electable” but if you were one of those who couldn’t imagine Clinton losing, I don’t why you would think that your judgement is credible?