KEENE, New Hampshire — Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) made her pitch to New Hampshire on a snowy Monday morning to a hall of over 100 supporters at a local state college.
In a word: “Decency.”
Klobuchar offered her plain-spoken style and Midwestern pragmatism as the alternative to the “noise” of President Donald Trump — and his extreme left-wing opponents.
She promised to provide a “decency check” on the president, whom she accused of serving his rich “Mar-a-Lago” friends.
Klobuchar drew cheers from the crowd when she announced that two recent polls had shown her moving into third place in the Granite State ahead of Tuesday’s crucial primary.
And she also drew applause for Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), whom she praised for voting to remove the president from office for “abuse of power” in last week’s impeachment vote in the Senate. (Romney was the only Senator of either party to cross party lines.)
Klobuchar cited the fact that she had never lost an election before as inspiration for her chances in her current presidential run. And she said she relished the thought of confronting Trump on the debate stage.
She provided an extensive family history — grandfather an iron-ore miner, father a recovering alcoholic — then ran through an exhaustive, detailed list of her policy proposals, ranging from climate change to health care to trade education to gun control.
It was, at times, somewhat monotonous — so much so that one news crew started packing up their equipment during the speech — but it is part of the image she wants to present to voters: someone who focuses heavily on substance, not on style.
One man began speaking from the floor broke down in tears as he described his objections to federal gun policy, demanding that Klobuchar denounce former President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for Operation Fast and Furious. She dodged the question.
“I’m a uniter,” she said, pledging to take on the man whom she referred to as the “divider-in-chief.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.