I have observed Amy Klobuchar up close for a long time. The first time I saw her in court the court reporter asked her to spell her name for him. The judge asked his court reporter in open court, “Good God, man, don’t you read the newspaper?”
Klobuchar’s rise in Minnesota politics is attributable in good part to her father’s prominence as a sports reporter and daily columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune. By the time she jumped into electoral politics everybody knew the name Klobuchar.
In Minnesota politics Klobuchar has led a charmed life, but so have a few other DFL politicians who lacked the advantage of a widely known name. Her popularity among Minnesota voters is not a credit to us. From my perspective, the most notable fact about Senator Klobuchar is what a phony she is.
She is not nice. She is not funny. She is not a moderate. She is not an accomplished legislator. She is an incredibly boring speaker.
Given my perch in the Twin Cities, I have written about Klobuchar many times. To take one example, doing the job that the Star Tribune has refused to do, I looked at her legislative imposture in “Amy Klobuchar, giant of the Senate.”
Klobuchar’s struggle to lift off in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has presented her with a new experience late in life and she is not handling it well. Her mask has slipped a bit as she has complained about the relative success of Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg has butt in to her presidential fantasy and Klobuchar resents it. Giving voice to her resentment is not smart and not a good look.
The Star Tribune hasn’t covered this story itself. It covers Klobuchar as a hometown hero and would prefer not to take the accustomed calls from her complaining about stories that fail to meet her expectations. In this case, the Star Tribune has outsourced the Klobuchar koverage to Sara Burnett (of the Associated Press) and to Felicia Sonmez (of the Washington Post).
Klobuchar’s public whining is a new look for her. It gives us a glimpse of the other side of her face. If she is able to hang in there, Klobuchar may yet lose the Minnesota presidential primary on March 3. In the meantime, however, she can work on the pretense that she is a gracious loser.
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