Amy Klobuchar: A Woman With Pete Buttigieg’s Experience Wouldn’t Make The Debate Stage


Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has struggled to gain much traction in the 2020 presidential election, claimed that while any of her 2020 Democratic rivals would make a better leader than President Donald Trump, a female candidate with the same low-level experience of South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg probably wouldn’t stand a chance at qualifying for the debates.

According to CNN, Klobuchar made the claim to Jake Tapper during Sunday’s State of the Union, arguing that female candidates were possibly held to a different standard than their male counterparts.

“Of the women on the stage — I’m focusing here on my fellow women senators, Sen. (Kamala) Harris, Sen. (Elizabeth) Warren and myself — do I think that we would be standing on that stage if we had the experience that he had? No, I don’t,” Klobuchar said.

The Minnesota senator compared her state and national-level experience to Buttigieg’s, arguing that even though she thinks he’s qualified to run, that her experience far outweighs his own. She also claimed that because of her Midwestern roots, she has a better shot at winning over undecided voters.

“Those are the kind of voters I’ve won and that is not true of Mayor Pete — that is just a fact,” Klobuchar said. “I also am someone that has passed multiple bills as a lead Democrat, important bills in Washington, DC. He’s had a different experience.”

Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg identify as the more moderate Democrats within the 2020 field of candidates, but unlike Klobuchar, Buttigieg has seen a considerable surge of support in recent weeks. According to the Real Clear Politics rolling average of polls, Buttigieg currently sits in fourth place with seven percent support. Klobuchar is in fifth place with 2.6 percent support.

The South Bend mayor was recently asked his thoughts on whether or not his gender plays a role in bolstering his appeal to voters. He was asked hypothetically if a female counterpart of the same age and mayor of a similar-sized city would receive the attention he did from the start of the 2020 race.

He replied, “I don’t know,” before following up with an explanation in which he essentially said if a female political doppelganger with a similar war record and policy proposals similar to his joined the race, he would have thought twice about whether to run against her or toss his support behind her campaign.

As The Inquisitr previously reported, last month Klobuchar attacked several other Democratic candidates who were trumping her in the polls, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Kamala Harris.

She argued that her polling data remained dismal because voters weren’t paying much attention to her yet, possibly due to a lack of having a “viral moment” like other candidates have experienced, though she pointed out that not all viral moments are necessarily good, citing Harris’ surge and subsequent fall after going head-to-head with Biden in the first debate.

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