Whether we like it or not, the 2020 race for President is on. Would-be candidates are hiring staff, they're planning trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, they're making phone calls—for money, of course—and they're giving interviews. And that's been keeping the New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser pretty busy.
Glasser was on Capitol Hill recently to speak with Amy Klobuchar, who was elected to the Senate, from Minnesota, in 2006. Klobuchar recently made an impression on many observers of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, during which she questioned the judge on his early drinking habits, and he answered sharply and then, later, had to apologize. Klobuchar was just reëlected by a wide margin in the midterms, and she's one of the many Democratic senators considering a run for the Presidency in 2020.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Question. I know you know the sort of Washington Beltway reporters who are constantly going out to see the rest of the country and saying, "What's happening there? How do you talk to Trump voters?" You've actually talked to Trump voters, and gotten them to vote for you. What are the one or two ways that you did that?
Well, I think the first is that you have to show up, and you have to go not just where it's comfortable but where it's uncomfortable. And that's why I visited all eighty-seven counties [in Minnesota] every year. One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, "Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat," and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they'd put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it's comfortable but where it's uncomfortable. And to me that means being there. So that's the first measure. And not avoiding it, and then to understanding that not one size fits all.
There are issues that transcend urban-rural, like, for instance, you don't want to kick people off of their insurance for preëxisting conditions. That was something that you saw Democrats run on, and win on. But then there are other issues that are unique. And I would put Critical Access Hospitals, rural broadband—most people in urban areas don't have to worry about that. And a lot of parts of our rural countryside can't even access cell-phone service, much less broadband. Their cell phones keep going in and out. And I don't understand, as I pointed out to the Farmers Union, how you can have rural cell-phone service all over Iceland and not in northern Minnesota.
But I gotta ask you: Donald Trump obviously isn't talking to people about rural broadband service, right. You know, he's not a technocrat. He's not immersed in the details of policy. Arguably, he's not even all that ideological, or he has a mishmash of different ideologies. So it's great that there are issues that appeal to different people, but does that still matter as much in this sort of post-ideological age?
I think it matters when someone makes promises and then time goes on and your life hasn't changed. So I do think it matters. And when you add disruptions in, and chaos, that makes things hard for you. So I think those things matter. But I think what you're getting at, which is really values, and it is kind of the argument that I feel in rural—and I think helped me to get support—is that you really have to go to the core of what kind of person you want to have in the White House, that your kids watch on TV when they're learning their civics lesson and the Pledge of Allegiance in first and second grade.
The second thing is that Donald Trump just doesn't talk policies and facts. In fact, he oftentimes gives statements that are completely contrary to the evidence, like what he just said on climate change, when his own Administration predicted dire consequences from climate change. So I think you not just have to meet him with facts, and you certainly don't want to go down every rabbit hole with him. But we have to meet him with emotion. And it doesn't have to be negative emotion. It can be positive emotion. So when he starts talking about caravans and mobs and all those things, you know what I say? I say, when I talk to our people about preëxisting conditions, I just don't use that boring term that a lot of people don't quite know what it means. I tell the story of a woman coming up to me in a parade with her baby carriage with a kid in it and she says, "You know what? This is my son. I'll do anything for him in the world. He has Down syndrome. He is a preëxisting condition. This is what a preëxisting condition looks like." So you say, "You know what, President Trump, really, your Administration is arguing to kick people off their insurance for preëxisting conditions? This is the kid you're talking about." So I think it's very important to respond to him, but to not let it dominate what your own agenda is.
A lot of people remember your star turn in the Kavanaugh hearings:
brett kavanaugh: You're asking about a blackout. I don't know. Have you?
amy klobuchar: Could you answer the question, Judge? I just—so, that's not happened. Is
that your answer?
b.k.: Yeah, and I'm curious if you have.
a.k.: I have no drinking problem,
Judge.b.k.: Yeah, nor do I.
a.k.: O.K. Thank you.
Your response to Kavanaugh was so straightforward, unpersonalized. A different kind of politics than we're used to. Do you see a lasting effect here, up here in the Senate, as a result of that incredibly traumatic, I think, for a lot of people, confirmation hearing? On both sides, actually.
It was. But when you really go to the guts of what happened, you had a situation where a nominee decided at a very critical hearing, where a woman who—my own colleagues on the other side of the aisle said she had great credibility—had come forward. And then he decided to politicize it in his statements the way that he literally attacked Democratic senators. And I said the next day, "Excuse me. We can't control sometimes what happens in the criminal-justice system or in politics. Things come at you that you wish you hadn't gotten. The question is not, Does that happen? The question is, when you're in a position of power, What do you do about it?
So my plea to my colleagues was, we need an investigation. We need to make sure that this doesn't happen again, in terms of having information hidden in forty-two thousand documents dumped on us the day before. So do I hope that this changed things, because it was so traumatic? Yes. Do I know how this is going to go with the next opening? No, I don't.
Do you think that he still should be investigated? Should the matter rest now that he's been confirmed?
Well, I know there's some complaints that are in the court system. I mean, that would be the procedural way to handle them. But there's no open way for us to do that now. And my own experience with this was just, you know, I was pretty shocked when he shot back at me when I was simply asking him questions, and then I felt it was very important for the dignity of Dr. Ford and the dignity of the Senate and the dignity of our country to not go down there with him and not land where he landed, because I think there's way too much of this going on in politics that's starting with the White House.
You know, "dignity" is definitely not the word that is going to come to mind when people write histories of this moment in Washington. Senator Klobuchar, our final lightning round here. On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?
Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I'm not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest. And I think you want to have people with different views running. I think it's really important to have that. I don't think it's bad that we have a competition for the nomination at this key moment in our nation's history.
You know, you say you want voices from the Midwest. And 2016 was decided in the Midwest. Is there a risk of overlearning the last battle? Refighting that last one?
Good question. I think this will all basically sort itself out. It won't always be pretty —It probably won't end up at that number. But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and they would have, they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we're not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren't getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren't feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren't doing in that last election.
New Yorker, December 18, 2018
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December 21, 2018
Post Script. So what are your thoughts? Klobuchar-Booker? The Midwest leading the way? Can Decency, Dignity and Fairness for all still win in America? #Klobuchar4POTUS That is the question.
So my plea to my colleagues was, we need an investigation. We need to make sure that this doesn't happen again, in terms of having information hidden in forty-two thousand documents dumped on us the day before. So do I hope that this changed things, because it was so traumatic? Yes. Do I know how this is going to go with the next opening? No, I don't.
