The ranks of the centrists in the Democratic nomination race thinned again on Monday, March 2, with the withdrawal of Senator Amy Klobuchar. In the aftermath of that of Pete Buttigieg, another Midwestern elected official who defended more moderate positions than that of the favorite, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, the elected representative of Minnesota finally decided not to wait for the results of his state, which vote Tuesday.
His renunciation came while campaign advertisements praising the senator were still broadcast. Not surprisingly, she was to publicly support former Vice President Joe Biden at a joint meeting in Texas later today.
Centrist
The senator made a big splash by announcing her candidacy in the middle of a snowstorm near Minneapolis on February 10, 2019. Donald Trump made fun of it on his Twitter account. Amy Klobuchar immediately replied, assuring that the billionaire's peroxidized hair would certainly have endured the ordeal less than his own.
Little girl of a miner, daughter of a journalist who has long fought against alcoholism, the senator had built her candidacy on her supposed capacity to campaign in the states won by Donald Trump in 2016 – Wisconsin neighboring Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania -, highlighting its pragmatism and expertise in everyday matters, far from " the political revolution "And" major structural changes Promised by Bernie Sanders and her Massachusetts colleague Elizabeth Warren. She also highlighted the agreements reached in the Senate with her less conservative Republican colleagues.
Amy Klobuchar thus defended a partial free higher education as well as an arrangement of the device aiming to help the people penalized by the debt contracted during their years at the university, rather than an outright cancellation. She also defended an extension of the health coverage bequeathed by Barack Obama rather than the drastic replacement of private insurance in favor of entirely federal funding.
Eclipsed by Buttigieg
His plea for solutions presented as realistic, however, did not appeal to voters in Iowa, the first state to vote, on February 3, and whose sociology is not far from that of neighboring Minnesota. Amy Klobuchar was overshadowed by the youngest nomination contestant, Pete Buttigieg, who was camping in the same political space as her. She came in a very disappointing fifth place, immediately compromising her chances.
Always solid during the debates, the senator took a small revenge by arriving, to everyone's surprise, in third position in New Hampshire. This semi-success was not enough to start a virtuous dynamic, due to the space prevailing in the center. The senator, like Pete Buttigieg, could only count on a collapse of Joe Biden to hope to break through. His crushing victory in South Carolina on February 29, and Amy Klobuchar's inability to attract voters from African and Latin American minorities sealed his fate.
