‘Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Media efforts to paint Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as a moderate may be one of the boldest attempts yet to gaslight the American public.
The term “gaslighting” refers to a form of psychological manipulation that aims to warp people’s perception of reality. First featured in the eponymous 1944 Ingrid Bergman movie, it enjoyed a resurgence in the 2001 French film Amelie, and the Twitter era has since resurrected it as a popular hashtag topic.
From the Green New Deal to the Jussie Smollett hoax to the fraudulent claims of disgraced FBI Deputy Andrew McCabe, conservative commentators have now taken to calling out mainstream gaslighting efforts to delete and deny evidence of false statements after a story is debunked.
One such narrative has recently developed around Klobuchar, who announced her 2020 presidential bid on Feb. 10, with many outlets claiming she is among the few bridge-builders in the upper chamber able to cross the aisle and cooperate with her Republican counterparts.
But regardless of whether she is more pleasant than her fellow Democratic primary contenders, in terms of Klobuchar’s actual voting record, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Radical Record
On a report card by the think-tank FreedomWorks that evaluated support for right-wing issues, Klobuchar—who just began her third term in the Senate—had one of the worst lifetime records of any active senators, voting with conservatives only 6 percent of the time.
For comparison, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had 11 percent; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had a 12 percent rating, and Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J.—both joining Klobuchar in the 2020 presidential primary ring—had 17 percent ratings.
Another pro-freedom advocacy group, Freedom for All, factored in co-sponsored bills and gave Klobuchar an even lower rating, 2 out of 100.
One record-tracking site that purported to be nonpartisan was slightly more generous. Govtrack.us, in holistically analyzing Klobuchar’s legislative efforts during the 115th Congress (2017-2018), ranked her the 15th most conservative Democratic senator last session.
“The three-term senator is no Joe Manchin,” said Politico in a recent profile, referencing West Virginia’s aisle-crossing Democrat with a more conservative voting record than several centrist Republicans.
“Klobuchar votes with her party when it comes to big issues like abortion and immigration,” said the article. “… But she’s also established herself as someone who can cut deals with Republicans and occasionally tacks to the center. It’s a combination that that could give her a boost among primary voters seeking a candidate with bipartisan bona fides if it doesn’t doom her with a party running to the left.”
Minnesota ‘Nice’
Those singing Klobuchar’s praises tend to acknowledge her undeniably radical voting record but say other factors, such as her “Minnesota nice” attitude, make her an effective leader.
The Politico profile was among several articles surrounding her 2020 announcement that found Republican senators all but endorsing Klobuchar.
“I hope I’m not condemning her nascent run for the presidency,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “She’s too reasonable, too likable, too nice.”
She also garnered the support of NeverTrump conservative George Will, who wrote in a Jan. 30 Washington Post column, “When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity, their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota. … Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing.”
But conflicting reports have painted a different picture about her supposedly even-keeled demeanor.
Klobuchar came onto the radar of those outside the upper-midwestern dairy belt or inner D.C. circles during her confrontation last September with then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when she asked him if he had a drinking problem.
Kavanaugh’s defiant “Have you?” response underscored the fact that it was an irrelevant and inappropriately sensationalist, personal attack for the public forum.
The judge later apologized and reiterated an earlier statement about his respect for Klobuchar, but the Left used it nonetheless to target his “temperament.”
Ironically, Klobuchar herself faced criticism of her temperament recently from former staff members who said she often belittled their work and was prone to emotional outbursts.
The reports of her mistreatment, curiously, seemed to come from predominately left-leaning outlets such as reputability-lacking websites BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post.
Some commentaries came to her defense, pointing to a double-standard that would never fault a male candidate for having a brusque personality.
“Do men get accused of this type of bitchy behavior?,” asked “View” co-host Joy Behar, herself the subject of similar criticisms. “I don’t think so.”
Klobuchar addressed the issue of her temperament with reporters following the Minneapolis rally where she announced her presidential candidacy.
She said the snowflake staffers’ gripes stemmed from the demandingly high standards she had set both for herself and the country.
“Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people,” she said, according to HuffPost. “I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country.”
Who Smells Gas?
If the media’s Klobuchar coverage is yet another example of fake news, the question remains, then, who is behind it.
Perhaps some moderate conservatives who truly would like to see her oust Trump are going a little too far in praising her personal demeanor.
Or it may be that she is actually the weakest candidate due to her radical voting record, making her the most favorable opponent to Trump supporters.
On the other hand, some radical liberals may going out of their way to place Klobuchar at the center of the ideological spectrum in order to crowd out more conservative “centrist” candidates—a tactic that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has also been pursuing with his threats to run as an independent.
Or it could be that Klobuchar, herself, is the one behind the trickery. Bloomberg reports that she has recently sought to veer to the right of some of her competitors by denouncing socialist agenda items such as the Green New Deal and free college tuition.
“Klobuchar literally reeks, in a good way, common sense and I think that is going to be a very helpful attribute for anyone who can muster that in competing against this White House,” said Jerry Crawford, a prominent Democratic strategist in Iowa, which will hold its caucus—the first of the primary season—in about ll months.
However, if America’s idea of “common sense” is a radical liberal who just happens to reject socialism, at least the fossil-fuels industry can breathe easy—it will take some heavy-duty gas to keep all those lights lit.