In the final stretch of the Iowa campaign season, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has settled on amplifying her winning track record as her closing pitch to the state’s Democratic caucus-goers. In speeches and conversations with voters, she turns her past electoral successes into a series of perfectly polished, potentially persuasive speaking moments as often as possible.
Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Des Moines, the last chance for six presidential candidates to make their cases to voters before caucus day, was no exception.
“When you look at what I have done, I have won every race, every place, every time,” Klobuchar said on stage, delivering an oft-repeated line with lyrical precision. “I have won in the reddest of districts. I have won in the suburban areas, in the rural areas. I have brought people with me.”
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And it’s true. Klobuchar, the 59-year-old senator from Minnesota, has indeed won time and time again, making her notion of a modern-day electability argument (Republicans like me too!) both factually accurate and politically palatable. Perhaps even more so now, as Democrats routinely rank beating President Donald Trump as their top priority.
But there’s nuance to the all-I-do-is-win narrative that doesn’t make it into her stump speech. You won’t hear her mention it on the debate stage. And she doesn’t drop it on the trail. That is, despite Klobuchar’s numerous electoral successes, she hasn’t really ever faced a competitive Senate race. She aptly beat out several opponents, yes. But largely weak and underfunded ones, and regularly during blue wave elections. Her seat in 2018 was so safe, in fact, that elections experts put her in the same category with solidly blue Democratic strongholds on the coasts.
“So many of these talking points don’t necessarily stand up to real scrutiny,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter that analyzes races, told The Daily Beast. “Running a Senate race in Minnesota is different from running for president.”
Kondik elaborated: “The whole premise of it, that previous non-presidential results are predictive of a national election, I don’t think that’s really applicable.”
Longtime Minnesota political analyst Steven Schier, along with multiple national and state-wide elections and political analysts interviewed, agreed.
“It’s a valid case in Minnesota in those years. But we’re not in Minnesota and it’s not those years,” Schier said. “Environments change and electorates change. I don’t find it a particularly compelling argument.”
Much of Klobuchar’s national strategy hinges on Iowa, where she’ll return to this weekend for a series forums, town halls, and community events in the central and eastern areas of the state. It’s there that one well-placed Democratic official said voters are more familiar with the essentially unchallenged nature of her past victories than those who don’t know her as well.
“We know that they’re not super competitive races that she’s been involved in,” said the Democratic official, who has remained neutral in the primary. “To be this scrappy underdog that is the terminator of elections isn’t exactly true.”
With just 16 days until the caucus, Klobuchar is not even registering at half of the support that fourth place contender—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—is currently totaling. In the latest Real Clear Politics polling average, Warren earns 16 percent, several points behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, compared to Klobuchar’s 7 percent.
A Des Moines Register/CNN poll released last week placed Klobuchar one point below that: 6 percent, unchanged from the last survey taken just two months prior.
Eyeing that, her team sees opportunity. “Senator Klobuchar has proven over and over again that she can win in every place, every race, every time,” Klobuchar’s campaign manager Justin Buoen told The Daily Beast in a statement. “At the top of the Democratic ticket in 2020, the senator will beat President Trump, rebuild the ‘Blue Wall’, and ensure that Democrats win big up and down the ballot.”
Klobuchar, who remains one of the most popular senators in the country, has done 165 events in Iowa over 61 days—more than any other serious 2020 competitor—according to a recent Des Moines Register tracker. They are hoping to outperform expectations on Feb. 3. One source familiar with Klobuchar’s thinking told The Daily Beast that they’re aiming for, and strategizing around, a strong third or fourth place finish to generate enough momentum to move forward to New Hampshire’s primary the following week.
The same person also said the campaign believes they can pick off support from nearly every 2020 Democrat, including Warren, and especially with women voters or those who are uncertain about Buttigieg or Biden’s ages or long term prospects. Pull a little from moderates Biden and Buttigieg, and chip away at Warren’s base with women, particularly older women, and Klobuchar could secure a respectable showing in her neighboring state.
Emphasizing her track record of successes is also core to Klobuchar’s electability argument. Seeking to highlight that during the debate in Los Angeles, she offered a handy retort to a perceived slight from Buttigieg during the previous debate, where he negatively categorized the collective years of “Washington” experience among several senators on stage.
“When we were in the last debate, mayor, you basically mocked the hundred years of experience on the stage,” Klobuchar said. “I think this experience works, and I have not denigrated your experience as a local official. I have been one. I just think you should respect our experience.”
“I think winning matters,” she said, throwing intentional shade on the relative impossibility for Buttigieg to win statewide in his home state of Indiana.
But citing Klobuchar’s single-digit poll numbers in her neighboring state as just one data point, the Iowa official saw a potential pitfall to making “winning” such a big part of her pitch. “It almost makes it a cruel joke to be like, ‘I’m always winning,’” the official said, pointing to her distant fifth place standing. “You are almost making a joke for yourself.”
Another longtime Democratic source familiar with Klobuchar, who has nonetheless won every Senate race by double digit margins, in Minnesota said it’s hardly a surprise that she did so easily. “It’s true that she hasn’t had the toughest races,” the source said. “She would argue that’s because she’s so popular. It’s also true that she’s gotten lucky in some of her races.”
Schier, who’s analyzed Klobuchar’s races at Carleton College, said it’s not automatically true that she could replicate the same successes at the national scale, particularly against Trump. “Your margin depends on being in the right place at the right time,” he said. “You can’t necessarily assume that’s going to happen again.”
Still, immediately following Tuesday’s debate, Team Klobuchar fired off a press release boasting that she has “Never Lost An Election,” adding, “Amy Klobuchar has a proven record of winning big in the kinds of places Democrats will need to carry to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Despite running in a purple state that the President nearly won in 2016, she has never lost an election.”
Multiple sources noted that Trump was not on the ballot when she won.
Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, a non-partisan analysis and research service, said Klobuchar’s political skill is, in part, the reason she didn’t face more formidable challengers.
“Klobuchar didn't have to sweat out top-tier races in her Senate elections, but she deserves some credit for building a profile that discouraged top-tier Republicans from challenging her in the first place,” Gonzales told The Daily Beast.
One relevant detail, however, further emphasizes why the argument is not a perfect analogy for the 2020 general. In each of her recent races, Klobuchar had a massive monetary advantage that is unlikely to be replicated in a matchup against Trump, whose well-funded campaign re-election fund is sitting on gobs of cash.
In her 2012 Senate race, for example, Klobuchar raised nearly $10 million more than her Republican opponent. In 2018, the contrast was even more stark. Klobuchar brought in an impressive $10.68 million, while her top opponent raised only $258,000, making her re-election bid barely register as significant in elections indexes. That same year, Democrats easily won the governor and secretary of state races and picked up 19 House seats in State Legislative races.
“Klobuchar may or may not be a strong candidate [in 2020], but I don’t know her previous performance tells us about how it would work,” Kondik said. “She won’t be facing an underwhelming, underfunded opponent.”
