It may not have been the most pivotal moment of Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but for many it was the most cringeworthy. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D\u2026<\/b>
\nIt may not have been the most pivotal moment of Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but for many it was the most cringeworthy.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked the federal judge and Supreme Court nominee whether he had ever been blackout drunk. Kavanaugh, still worked up from an angry 45-minute opening statement accusing Democrats of seeking to derail his nomination, threw the question back at Klobuchar.
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cHave you?\u201d
Then he did so again. He did so despite the fact that, just moments before, Klobuchar had recalled her own father\u2019s struggles with alcoholism.
Any other senator \u2013 and especially one like Klobuchar with potential presidential ambitions \u2013 might have sought to grandstand, even if just to make doubly certain the moment went viral. And Klobuchar could perhaps have been forgiven for a more emotive response, given her story about her father.
Instead, she allowed the moment to pass. After a break, Kavanaugh came back and apologized to her. For a moment at least, the defiant one had been disarmed by his error.
The scene at the hearing \u2013 in which Kavanaugh was defending himself against allegations of sexual assault \u2013 has at once thrust Klobuchar into the national spotlight and reinforced what could be her central shortcoming as a 2020 contender for the presidency. In a party that by most accounts is searching for liberals and powerful personalities to counteract President Donald Trump, Klobuchar has crafted a brand almost diametrically opposed to that. In many ways, Klobuchar running and winning in 2020 would defy the conventional wisdom just like Trump did in 2016.
Yet more and more, she is finding herself earning strong reviews from partisan crowds, often on the strength of understated moments like Thursday\u2019s and the idea that she\u2019s essentially the complete antithesis of Trump. Where he\u2019s brash, extreme and exudes machismo, she\u2019s subtle, bookish, bipartisan and a woman in a party that is increasingly nominating female candidates.
\u201cAmy Klobuchar is clearly one of most successful politicians to come out of state since Walter Mondale and Hubert H. Humphrey. She owns the state politically,\u201d said Lawrence Jacobs, a political expert at the University of Minnesota. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not force of personality; it\u2019s channeling the concerns of Minnesota.\u201d
It\u2019s easy to dismiss \u201cMinnesota Nice\u201d as an overbroad stereotype, but Klobuchar has in many ways turned it into her political brand. Local political observers say she\u2019s built a strong one by focusing on less-divisive issues and emphasizing bipartisanship and coming together.
The latter was on display Friday when Klobuchar disappeared into an anteroom during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with Sens. Christopher Coons, D-Del., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. By the end of it, Flake reversed course and forced Republicans to delay a vote on Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination for a brief FBI investigation \u2013 a big win for Democrats who had to that point apparently lost all hope.
She has been rewarded for that approach with an extremely strong approval rating back home. One poll last year put it at 72 percent \u2013 the highest ever in the poll\u2019s decades-long history. Klobuchar is a virtual shoo-in for reelection this year, after which she can more publicly look to the next potential campaign.
And that popularity seems to be seeping into other areas of the country, where Klobuchar\u2019s travels have notably increased even as she is ensuring her reelection back home.
She earned a strong reception when she showed up to a fundraising dinner at the Texas Tribune Festival on Friday night. As she made her way to the head table, she was mobbed by well-wishers and followed by applause.
After the crowd settled down, John Heilemann, the host of Showtime\u2019s political documentary series \u201cThe Circus,\u201d asked how many of the event\u2019s donors had backed Hillary Clinton for president. Nearly every hand went up. They applauded again when Heilemann mentioned the events in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Klobuchar\u2019s role.
\u201cI asked her outside just now: What happened today?\u201d said Heilemann. \u201cI\u2019m going to paraphrase what she said: We did our f\u2014in\u2019 job.\u201d
If the 2020 campaign were to be decided by Clinton supporters only, Klobuchar might have a good chance. Her approach is in many ways Clintonian, aiming to triangulate and avoid alienating others.
But it\u2019s broadly believed that the moment doesn\u2019t exactly call for that. Democrats\u2019 2020 contenders seem anxious to get to one another\u2019s left, embracing single-payer health care and reforming or even getting rid of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. While nearly every other 2020 contender in the Senate has gone down that road, Klobuchar hasn\u2019t even tried to match them.
Those Democrats who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee approached things much more aggressively than did Klobuchar the last few weeks. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N. J., mused publicly about having an \u201cI am Spartacus\u201d moment. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., led a walkout of the proceedings Friday before a compromise was reached. At one point, both declined to vote on whether to move Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination to the Senate floor \u2013 the only members on the committee who went that far.
In other words, the same thing that made gave Klobuchar her almost impenetrable brand in Minnesota may not translate, barring a bit of a political redefinition, for her party or for herself.
\u201cWhile she\u2019s a down-the-line Democratic vote, she doesn\u2019t have an image here as the partisan bomb-thrower,\u201d said Minnesota Republican consultant Mark Drake. \u201cI think Democrats are looking for someone who is the partisan bomb-thrower.
\u201cShe\u2019s the senator next door, not the bomb-thrower next door.\u201d
But others see in Klobuchar a probing prosecutor who could be as beguiling for Trump as she was for Kavanaugh, however briefly. MJ Hegar, a Democrat running in Texas\u2019s Republican-leaning 31st congressional district, said that Klobuchar\u2019s exchange had revealed something dark about Kavanaugh\u2019s character.
\u201cYou saw a disdain from him in the way he treated the female senators, compared to how he treated the male senators,\u201d said Hegar. \u201cThat was distressing to me. This is someone who wants to be on the Supreme Court and deciding issues that relate to women and our freedom.\u201d
Emily\u2019s List president Stephanie Schriock took a similar view. \u201cIt was bro-y, and elitist, and privilege was oozing out of him, talking to a woman who has been elected by the people of her state,\u201d she said. \u201cTo have him treat her like that? That\u2019s not somebody who should be on the court. And Amy did her job.\u201d
Meg Walsh, 57 and a candidate for the Minnesota Senate, agreed the Klobuchar laid bare who Kavanaugh was.
\u201cHe did not answer the question. He asked her a question,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cHe was extremely inappropriate, and she handled it very well, staying on the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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