The 2020 Democratic primary field may be the most wide open in recent memory—perhaps even in the history of American politics—and as candidates prepare to announce presidential bids, there are already arguments being made as to their respective strengths and weaknesses.
To get a sense of what they think will prove helpful and harmful for candidates who have announced their intention to unseat President Donald Trump, The Daily Beast spoke with opposition researchers and operatives in both parties—people whose job it is to understand and exploit the vulnerabilities of those running for office. All of them cautioned that their perspectives were not the same as predictions, and noted that the serious digging has yet to truly begin: when people in their line of work begin studying everything from voting records to court documents to financial transactions.
But they still had insights to share, which The Daily Beast will be presenting in a multi-part series. Today, we look at Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
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The three-term senator from Minnesota is one of the more recent entries into the Democratic presidential primaries, but has already drawn plaudits for her strong history of electability in a purple state and her bipartisan legislative track record. Klobuchar’s deep roots in the Upper Midwest, a critical region in early primary states like Iowa and Michigan as well as in the general election, are also seen as a major asset.
“The election is probably gonna turn on the Upper Midwest the way it did in 2016—Minnesota came very close to turning Republican for the first time since 1972,” said Prof. Howard Lavine, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota and director of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology. “Her general manner, her accent, her way of speaking, her background, will be attractive to those voters who will probably swing the election.”
In the first days of her presidential campaign, Klobuchar expressed skepticism of many of the more left-wing policies espoused by others seeking the Democratic nomination, including “Medicare for All,” free four-year public college tuition, and the “Green New Deal.”
“If I was a magic genie and could give that to everyone and we could afford it, I would,” Klobuchar said at a CNN town hall. “I’ve got to tell the truth.”
Prof. Paul Goren, chair of the University of Minnesota’s political science department, pointed to Klobuchar’s track record of moderation—combined with concrete legislative results—as an asset in the Democratic primary.
“She’s a competent, no-nonsense, results-oriented politician, and that probably helps her,” said Goren. “It draws a nice contrast with someone like Bernie Sanders or President Trump himself, who have lots of big ideas, but they haven’t produced many results.”
The current state of play in the Democratic field, which includes numerous progressive candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), means that Klobuchar’s more moderate lane is less crowded—for now.
“She might be creating a less populated, more moderate lane,” Lavine said. “If there are six candidates trying to win the Bernie Sanders, economically populist lane, but only two or three in the more moderate lane, that itself is an advantage.”
But such an advantage is temporary, one opposition researcher cautioned, especially with other relative centrists like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) still mulling over jumping into the race.
“She has a profile here as more of a bipartisan person, which is fine, but what lane is that?” an opposition researcher said. “If Biden gets in the race, she’s not going to be ‘the bipartisan person,’ because everyone knows Biden is the guy who’s friends with everybody… If Biden gets in, I don’t see how she survives.”
“If that lane gets crowded, then that advantage disappears to an extent,” Lavine said.
Klobuchar’s strong electoral history—her narrowest margin of victory is more than 20 points—also has a caveat, observers said, noting that she has never faced election in a year with severe headwinds for Democrats.
“She’s won big in Minnesota three times, but the flipside of that is that she’s untested in difficult elections,” Goren said. That, combined with a prosecutorial record that may perturb criminal justice reform advocates, makes good performance in a crowded primary less of a given than it has been back in Minnesota.
Klobuchar’s well documented staffing issues—she has the highest staff turnover of any senator, and has been accused of throwing objects in her office, berating staffers for losing cutlery, and problematic parental leave policies—could also be a headache for the senator.
“There’s a gendered aspect” to those stories, Lavine said, “that’s very tricky.”
But Klobuchar’s embrace of her “tough boss” reputation, Goren said, may help neutralize some of those concerns.
“In the grand scheme of scandals, being a hard person to work for... I don’t think many people will care,” Goren said.
An opposition research agreed, nothing that the “inside baseball” of Capitol Hill gossip wasn’t nearly as delicious to those outside of D.C. politics.
“Most Americans don’t really pay attention to that stuff,” the oppo expert said.
The real “personality problem,” experts told The Daily Beast, may be a lack of superstar quality that other Democratic hopefuls have in spades.
“She doesn’t have that kind of charisma to fire up the base Democratic voters the way Bernie Sanders does, or at least had in 2016,” Goren said
“Minnesotans tend not to be the most expressive of types, and how well she will play outside of the Midwest is less clear,” Lavine concurred. “She’s certainly less flamboyant than a Bernie Sanders, a Kamala Harris.”
Next week, we talk to oppo researchers about the strengths and weaknesses of Howard Schultz, the billionaire founder of Starbucks Coffee whose long-shot exploration of an independent run for the White House has infuriated Democrats—and could spell Trump’s re-election.
