Klobuchar's big idea: Bipartisan appeal can beat Trump

“People are so mad about Donald Trump and the Republicans,” she said during a recent interview in Des Moines. “But remember, this is about actually getting things done. And first of all, winning an election. There’s nothing wrong with anger and passion, but it’s putting it into something that will get results.”

Since entering the race more than two months ago in the midst of a Minnesota blizzard, Klobuchar has been resolutely inching her way forward. Forgoing packed rallies and soaring rhetoric, she is trying to sell voters on the politics of the practical, arguing that her record can win back some of the coveted Rust Belt voters who supported President Donald Trump.

Instead of high school gymnasiums crowded with sweaty, cheering Democrats, there have been health care round tables and tours of ethanol plants. As other candidates roll out the policies of left-wing dreams, Klobuchar has focused her early proposals on reliably bipartisan concerns like infrastructure and privacy protections for personal data.

But as her rivals promise generational change, national unity and sweeping liberal platforms, Klobuchar’s big idea is far more prosaic: a win.

“I am your neighbor,” she told several dozen voters gathered at a union hall in Des Moines on a recent Friday afternoon. “I think you all know we had some difficulty in some of the states in the heartland in 2016. But I’m someone who’s been able to win in difficult counties.”

It is an unusually explicit electoral appeal aimed squarely at the animating desire of Democratic primary voters: finding a candidate who can defeat Trump.

While Democrats are united around that goal, there is little consensus over how to achieve it. After a winter in which liberal ideas dominated the primary race, the entrance of more moderate candidates, like Klobuchar, is prompting a fresh round of soul-searching about whether embracing policies like the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All” could backfire in a general election, alienating the suburban voters who helped lead the party to victory in the midterms.

Along with Klobuchar, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to enter the race in the coming days, and former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who has already declared his candidacy, believe they can win enough support from the party’s liberal wing with appeals of electability, even if they do not quite capture voters’ imaginations.

Klobuchar describes herself as a “proven progressive,” citing former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Sen. Paul Wellstone, two liberal Minnesotan political icons, as her mentors.

During her three terms in the Senate, she has not led on divisive issues like immigration, focusing instead on solving consumer-friendly problems like curbing the cost of prescription drugs, tackling opioid abuse, improving the safety of schools and swimming pools, and increasing the oversight of big technology companies.

“She’s progressive, but she’s not out there on crazy issues, particularly issues that can’t be funded in our lifetime,” said Mondale, who encouraged Klobuchar to jump into the race. “Right now it’s all flash, but that doesn’t do it in the long run. You’ve got to have quality and substance and experience.”

He added, “They’re all spouting off with good ideas, or bad ideas that sound good, and Amy will do this slowly.”

Klobuchar has yet to crack the top tier of the polls, though she has done well enough to earn a place on the debate stage.

While she is hardly a centrist, she has distinguished herself by breaking from the new liberal orthodoxy that has dominated the primary so far.

The first policy proposal released by her campaign was a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, an idea that is popular among Republicans and was championed by Trump during his presidential run.

She does not favor a “Medicare for All” health care system, preferring a more graduated approach, and she has called the Green New Deal “aspirational.”

When asked by a student at a CNN town hall if she supported free tuition for students at public colleges and universities, she said she did not.

“If I was a magic genie and could give that to everyone and we could afford it, I would,” she said.

Her approach has turned off some progressive activists.

“When we talk to our members, frankly, they aren’t super excited about Sen. Klobuchar,” said Yvette Simpson, chief executive of Democracy For America, a political action committee that backed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 presidential primary. “Voters are looking for champions, fighters, people who are going to go all the way. She has taken an approach that is unfortunately more incremental.”

Klobuchar, 58, grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs. Her mother was a schoolteacher. Her father, a prominent newspaper columnist, struggled with alcoholism during her childhood, and Klobuchar was rocketed into the national spotlight after she raised those struggles during a hearing about the sexual assault allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

She has referenced her father’s story on the campaign trail while discussing opioid addiction and mental health, saying his story showed her that “everyone should be able to be pursued by grace” and find redemption.

The queen of the clever aside, she peppers her stump speech with jokes about raising money from her ex-boyfriends (“not an expanding base”), working with Republicans like the anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist (“don’t be scared”) and making her case to Minnesota’s independent voters (“three words for you: Gov. Jesse Ventura”).

Her wit and willingness to work across the aisle have made her popular among Republicans, winning her a laudatory column from conservative writer George Will and compliments from her GOP colleagues in the Senate and in her home state.

“She goes out of her way to connect with people who may not traditionally vote for Democrats,” said Charles R. Weaver Jr., a Republican business lobbyist who served in the Minnesota statehouse.

“But she’s not flashy,” he added. “And maybe that’s what Democrats want. And if that’s what they want, she’s not going to be there at the end.”

A big part of her argument hinges on geography: Klobuchar believes her understanding of Midwestern voters and ability to win Republican areas is key to her success.

It was Hillary Clinton’s narrow victory in Minnesota, a state she won by the smallest margin of any Democratic presidential candidate in decades, that prompted Klobuchar to think seriously about mounting her own presidential bid.

She spent 2018 working to elect other Democrats in her home state, helping her party hold both Senate seats and the governorship and flip control of two congressional districts (though the Republicans flipped two as well).

Although her public persona has been described as “Minnesota nice,” Klobuchar is a shrewd political insider who softens her efforts to win over tough rooms with flattery and a quick, often folksy and occasionally dirty, sense of humor. She has acknowledged critiques that she mistreats her staff by describing herself as someone with high expectations who can “sometimes be too tough.”

Fiercely proud of her bipartisan approach, she heralds the high number of bills she has passed through Congress, the 42 counties Trump carried that she won last November and the allies she has cultivated across the aisle.

“When I look at this landscape we’re in, with all these people running, I think eventually people in the Democratic Party are going to say, show me the work, show me what you’ve gotten done,” she said. “But also show me how you can win, because that is the No. 1 concern they have.”

First, though, she must prevail in a crowded Democratic primary where her regional appeal may not carry the sway it once did. In an increasingly national media environment, cable news appearances and internet fame have driven notable amounts of money, coverage and momentum.

“I just don’t have the sense that being from a neighboring state is a huge advantage in such a big field at this particular point,” said J. Ann Selzer, a longtime pollster with one of the most accurate track records in Iowa. “Everything is more nationalized.”

Klobuchar and her aides acknowledge that a strong showing in Iowa is particularly crucial to her chances, given that she casts herself as the “senator next door.”

“I love the smell of ethanol,” she said, trooping through the gravel yard of a plant in rural Nevada, Iowa, as cold winds swept hard hats off the heads of those around her. “It’s like waking up with fresh bread.”

A few hours later, she made her pitch at a meeting with the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines, telling them that she had stopped by the ethanol plant as part of her effort to reach beyond traditional Democratic voters.

“You have to meet people where they are and go out there,” she said.

David and Lauren Solomon, Democratic retirees from Des Moines, said they believed a more moderate candidate, like Klobuchar, would have the best shot at defeating Trump.

“Sure, I’d like some of these young kids, but they don’t have a chance against Trump in my opinion,” David Solomon said. “You’ve got to win the majority of the people.”

But sitting just a seat away, Catie Wittanger, a student at Drake University, said she thought most of the Democratic candidates could probably win the White House. What was most important to her was someone who shared her progressive values.

“Because of how our political system is right now, we do need somebody who is willing to take really big steps that a lot of people may consider risky,” Wittanger said. “I don’t think I could see myself caucusing for Klobuchar.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Klobuchar's big idea: Bipartisan appeal can beat Trump

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