Amy Klobuchar Trolls Hillary: ‘There Wasn’t a Lot of Campaigning in Wisconsin in 2016’

Democratic Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar took a shot at failed 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Sunday announcement of her own 2020 run.

“We’re going to be in Iowa and Wisconsin,” Klobuchar said, when asked about travel priorities for the campaign. “We’re starting in Wisconsin because, as you remember, there wasn’t a lot of campaigning in Wisconsin in 2016. With me, that changes. … I’m going to be there a lot.”

Klobuchar was referencing Clinton’s historic loss to President Donald Trump in Wisconsin, becoming the first Democrat to lose that state since Walter Mondale’s loss to Ronald Reagan in November 1984. In the campaign memoir What Happened, Clinton claims to have been “caught by surprise” when the state turned red in 2016:

Polls showed us comfortably ahead, right up until the end. They also looked good for the Democrat running for Senate, Russ Feingold. We had 133 staff on the ground and spent nearly $3 million on TV, but if our data (or anyone else’s) had shown we were in danger, of course we would have invested even more.

Had she known, Clinton said she would have “torn up” her schedule, “which was designed based on the best information we had,” and “camped out there.” Despite these assertions, Wisconsin was not the only state left behind in her ill-fated run. Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania also favored Trump, where her victories should have been relatively secure.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza has speculated that Kobuchar was trying to send a very specific message to voters: “I may not be the best-known or best-funded candidate, but I know how to win in the place that the best-known and best-funded candidate couldn’t the last time around.”

Now all that remains is to see whether she can live up to that ambitious pitch.