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Sunday, November 25, 2018

Purple Amy, part 2. Is better than Biden enough?

Not expecting a part two until soundings as if Klobuchar were presidential surfaced, more may be said beyond an earlier post - from a week ago. Linking here.

[UPDATE: Omitted by error from the following listing, hometown locally written bandwagon joinder; Strib, a post today.] New, similar links, here from a year ago, here from weeks ago, MoJo from weeks ago with Amy in a parade of names, trivia (a/k/a a Facebook page), Alpha News a year and a half ago mentioning Amy along with some Republican women as is their habit to favor that party, and here, a recent Hill item linked to by Timmer, with his analysis online here.

That catalog being given, readers should note a focus of this post on the latter two, because Timmer's thinking is always worthy, and he opens by citing the item in The Hill. First, Osler at The Hill, excerpted - links omitted:

Amy Klobuchar should run for president.

It may not be what she wants to do — who wants to spend months being subjected to vile insults? — but it is what our nation needs. Within a party that fell to Donald Trump because it lost its sense of what works in the swath of territory between Pennsylvania and the Dakotas, she is the best hope. In the midterms she not only won in urban areas but in many rural parts of Minnesota.

Klobuchar is strong, she’s smart, and she’s experienced, but the same can be said of many other potential candidates. What distinguishes her from Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and most of her other potential primary opponents is almost ineffable, but it comes down to this: she is not enveloped in a shining cloak of ambition.

And that may be the greatest qualification of all in the face of an incumbent who is little more than that cloak.

Many of her potential opponents certainly boast a harder edge and more direct rebukes to the Trump agenda. Among the women, Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand are running well to Klobuchar’s left. But like Hillary Clinton before them, they are prone to drop too easily into the “coastal elite” category in the minds of too many voters.

Readers wanting the full story and/or links, again here. As a first observation, other tired middle-road names get mentioned; Bernie omitted, Warren omitted; even a nice powerfully strong net neutrality person, Montana's Steve Bullock, gets no mention. He gets a Crabgrass sidebar, with earlier Crabgrass posting available, per a websearch. He seems less a middle-road creature than Amy or Booker, (less a darling of big money too), but let that websearch do it for him for this post, Amy being the subject. Bullock is not a Berniecrat by any measure, but closer to it than being a big money attractor, Booker being more owned by Wall Street than Amy certainly, but each as each is. One opinion in passing, not fleshed out for now, if a middle-road female candidate needs notice Maria Cantwell as one of the two women Senators from Washington has more to offer than Amy or Cantwell's cohort, Patty Murray, being the opinion held here. Again, the post is not about Cantwell, nor Bullock, but AMY. [THE better than Biden part of the headline is mentioned in passing, with little disagreement expected, Biden being who he's been all the sorry unprepossessing time; with the post not being about his ambition either.] Hence, Osler continues:

Klobuchar’s personality and positions line up more directly with the last president who won as a Democrat, Barack Obama. Like Klobuchar, he came across as a reasonable Midwesterner, calm in the face of crossfire and quick to talk about solving problems rather than the demons on the other side of the political line. While Republicans and Fox News were quick to describe him as an extremist, the description never really fit. Even his hallmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was a moderate reform whose structure was defined within the Heritage Foundation and test-run by Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts.

That kind of low-drama reasonableness is back in style, a backlash to the backlash.

To say Klobuchar is reminiscent of a big-time disappointment surely is faint praise. Likely true, at least I'd not disagree. CHANGE and HOPE being paradoxical slogans of OBAMA, who gave us neither and hung Romneycare into the way toward reaching a true Single Payer reform allowing joinder with the remainder of the affluent nations of the world in civilized provision of health care; Canada and Norway being but examples, yet good ones. Osler continues saying she did okay against the Kavanaugh nomination which from day one had the votes needed. So points made in a charade, and then a weak Osler ending never stating any actual strong case for Klobuchar as presidential or as one in the Senate long enough to have shown leadership without ever showing actual leadership, a point Timmer makes.

Moving to Timmer's analysis:

Does anyone remember, in her twelve years in the Senate, a truly remarkable speech delivered by Sen. Klobuchar on the floor of the Senate? A genuine stemwinder on an important issue of the day? I don’t. Maybe readers will remind me. Sens. Humphrey, Mondale, Gene McCarthy, Wellstone, and Franken spoke memorably on many occasions.

I think this is because they were passionate about things. To me, there is a curious lack of passion in Amy Klobuchar. Some see this as an asset; I don’t. Sen. Klobuchar has a lot of political capital, but she hasn’t seemed willing to spend any of it for something she believes in. The conservation of political capital is the Prime Directive. [...]

Some activists I know call Sen. Klobuchar the “Queen of Small Ball.” [...]

When it came to a bunch of Democratic senators trying to score political points off of Al Franken and force him to resign, though, the best that Sen. Klobuchar could do is say that she thought that Al would do the right thing. Not, Let’s give Al his day in front of an ethics committee where his accusers also have to come before it and testify under oath.

I will be direct. I thought this was political cowardice. Sen. Klobuchar claims now that she didn’t call for Al’s resignation. She didn’t lift a finger to help him either.

It is hard to recall Sen. Klobuchar’s policy positions on most things. There are a couple I do remember, though.

Sen. Klobuchar is in favor of the repeal of the medical device tax because it is such a hardship for Minnesota companies. It is a tax intended to raise revenue to help offset the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act. It is also an excise tax; all device manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, pay it. It puts no Minnesota company or manufacturer at a disadvantage; [...]

Sen. Klobuchar also supported the (Tina) Smith amendment to bypass all that fussy administrative stuff and do a swap of federal public land with PolyMet to facilitate opening a copper sulfide mine in water-resource-rich northern Minnesota. There is a current federal law that prohibits swaps like this, by the way, but never mind. Thankfully, the amendment with stripped out of a conference committee bill this fall: a Republican-controlled conference committee.

[italics in original] Yes, Tina did that, and Stauber won anyway, hence a failure of purpose. Timmer continues:

Sen. Mitch McConnell says he won’t bring any legislation to protect Mueller to the floor. A lawsuit was started by three senators to stop the Whitaker appointment on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Neither Minnesota senator joined the suit.

You all remember the bromide about how you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the wait staff when they go out to a restaurant? Sen. Klobuchar has one of, if not the, highest rates of staff turnover in the Senate. “Former employees of Amy Klobuchar” is its own demographic. I admit this bothers me because I think there is a folksy truth in the bromide.

[link in the original]. Here's one: Name one big thing Klobuchar did as County Attorney which rings your bell as showing exceptional leadership. Right. She built up political capital and locals liked her because dad was a loved sports writer for a local newspaper. She's been correct on the abortion issue, but, what else?

We need progressive leadership. Not a dumpling. If it has to be a middle-road female from the Senate, there is Cantwell.

We need a Wellstone as president, but the chance for him there has passed. Closest to a Wellstone, and a female member of the Senate, clearly is Elizabeth Warren, who'd resonate as one who actually got something done, despite Trump's installing an agency assassin to head the agency Warren pushed into law to protect consumers from lending abuse. That showed leadership. Warren made it to Harvard professor at the same time Klobuchar made it to County Attorney. Just saying . . . bigger fish in a bigger pond.