Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) made a subtle dig at Hillary Clinton’s failure to campaign in the Midwest during the 2016 election in her speech to the Women’s Convention Friday evening. Sen. Klobuchar emphasized that “the Midwest matters,” marking a shift in the tone of some Democrats since the election.
Klobuchar told the crowd, “we have plenty to overcome here and even more to say but the last time I checked if you want action and you want to bring people along with you to the next marches and rallies you need an agenda, a to-do list.”
What was the first item on Klobuchar’s to-do list? “Here it goes quickly,” she said, “number one: Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota.”
“The Midwest matters and next time we cannot leave the middle of the country behind,” she told the cheering crowd.
Her second item was also reflective of a shift in Democratic rhetoric away from more hot button topics to a discussion of the economy - an area in which the Trump campaign thrived.
“We must focus on an economic agenda for America,” she said, “the proposition that we must be a country that makes stuff, that invents stuff, and exports to the world, and the simple idea that we leave no people behind.”
Klobuchar’s name has been floated as a prospect for the 2020 presidential election but she’s lagging in name recognition and denies that she is currently planning a presidential run.
Klobuchar still seems to have a better handle on what happened than Hillary Clinton who dismissed her failure in the Midwest in her recent book.
"If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won," Clinton wrote. "With a margin like that, everyone can have a pet theory about why I lost. It's difficult to rule anything out. But every theory needs to be tested against the evidence that I was winning until October 28, when [former FBI Director] Jim Comey injected emails back into the election.”
Clinton insists that her campaign "knew the industrial Midwest was crucial to our success," adding that she and her team "didn't ignore those states."