Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.
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Senator Amy Klobuchar, Running as a Democrat in the Age of Trump
Until September, you’d be forgiven for not knowing much about Senator Amy Klobuchar. A Democratic senator from Minnesota since 2006, Klobuchar made national headlines over her frank questioning of the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s history of drinking. She then ran for reëlection in November and won by a twenty-four-point margin.
Klobuchar’s opponent was the Republican Jim Newberger, but, like many Democrats, she really ran against Donald Trump. While Trump’s rural support throughout the country is generally quite strong, Klobuchar tells the staff writer Susan B. Glasser that the President’s character issues helped her in rural areas of her state. “You have to go to the core of, what kind of person do you have in the White House that your kids watch on TV when they’re learning their civics lesson and the Pledge of Allegiance?” she asks. “Who do you want speaking to them?”
As many as ten Democratic senators, including Klobuchar, are considered likely Presidential candidates for 2020, though she tells Glasser only that she is “considering” a run. She is adamant, though, that any Democratic victory requires an appeal to voters in the Midwest—a region that turned to Trump in 2016. She tells a story about her husband, one of six children who was often at risk of being forgotten at the gas station on family road trips. “The Midwest was left at the gas station” by Democrats, she says, “and we’re not going to let that happen again.”