Last weekend, the New York Times editorial board shocked everyone and endorsed The Ladies 2020—picking both Elizabeth Warren (the “radical”) and Amy Klobuchar (a sort of backup “realist” choice) in the Democratic presidential primary, in which they felt required to offer a multiplatform intervention. It was a farce—a tiresome exercise mainly constructed for the purpose of reminding everyone that the Times has a television show. It is not worth spilling any more ink on the stupidity of picking two candidates at all, let alone two candidates who appear to offer dramatically different visions for how American politics should proceed. But it is worth wondering how the paper of record’s half-endorsement of Amy Klobuchar became necessary. After all, she is a candidate who, as the paper admitted, has “struggled to gain traction on the campaign trail.” Or, as I might put it, is not going to win the primary.

Despite Klobuchar’s consistent position just outside the top tier of candidates, pundits cannot get enough of her. She satisfies every self-evident truth in the pundit bible about what Americans want. Most importantly, she is Midwestern. But she is also this field’s queen of Tellin’ It Like It Is—by which they mean being outspoken about what Beltway elites consider to be objective truths about the limits of political possibility in policymaking.



Pundit after pundit insists that she is funny. Every single debate has led to effusive praise for Klobuchar’s performance, with the December debate sparking stories about her “surge” in polling. (She polls around the high single digits in Iowa and recently scored a shocking 2 percent in a New Hampshire poll.) In January, the Times’ David Leonhardt described Klobuchar as “comfortably electable,” the sort of Democrat who “knows how to persuade voters who are different from her that she respects them,” with “a track record of winning the sorts of swing voters Democrats will likely need this year.” Jennifer Rubin gushed about Klobuchar providing “the Goldilocks solution for many undecided voters,” and previously argued that she “adeptly measures progressivism by results” with an “unmistakably on-target” message. It is always a good sign when such effusive praise for a Democrat comes from a conservative.



Despite all this attention, the Punditworld praise of Amy Klobuchar almost universally fails to reckon with one of the most significant stories of her candidacy: her reported abuse of her Senate staff. Though the Times board wrote that reports about Klobuchar’s treatment of her staff gave them “pause,” they framed the story as merely raising “questions about her ability to attract and hire talented people.” In this telling, treating your staff poorly is acceptable as long as it doesn’t impact your ability to hire the most sought-after consultants and wonks. This problem is simply a management issue, not a moral scandal; it invites no condemnation of the actual behavior, only its potential consequences. Leonhardt referenced it in oblique terms while comparing Klobuchar to Harry Truman, saying the “analogy extends to Klobuchar’s best-known weakness: Truman had a temper, too.”



What does it say about our pundit class that the story of Amy Klobuchar’s abusiveness is relegated to a story of campaign intrigue at best, or goes unmentioned at worst?

What does it say about our pundit class that the story of Amy Klobuchar’s abusiveness is relegated to a story of campaign intrigue at best, or goes unmentioned at worst? It can partly be explained by timing: The story was only reported after Klobuchar began running for president. But then we have to wonder why this news was so late in arriving. Washington political reporters undoubtedly knew the rumors of Klobuchar’s behavior for years and failed to report them.

