Amy Klobuchar shouldn’t run for president

Bella Beck

Karen Larionova looks smug in front of an American flag.

Saturday, Dec. 1, Sen. Amy Klobuchar visited Iowa. She met with farmers to lay out her generally boring plans for a farm bill and other liberal ideas, but the fact that she visited Iowa so soon after the midterms tells us that she might have big plans ahead: running for president.

The Iowa Caucuses are the first contest in the presidential season, so a politician visiting Iowa so soon after the midterms is an indicator that the politician is starting their campaign.

As much as I love Amy Klobuchar’s politics and “Minnesota nice” bipartisanship, she would be a horrible choice for the Democrats to push. Because she’s a Northern Democrat, a woman and a less famous politician nationwide, she probably wouldn’t win against the current president.

As a Northern Democrat, I could count the number of useless states she would win on my hands: Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and maybe Wisconsin. Regardless of her Midwestern charm, many Midwestern states already vote for Democrats, so she wouldn’t be winning anything new or helpful.

A Southern Democrat would have a proper advantage for swing states and moderate voters.

As a woman, Klobuchar will be subject to every form of misogyny possible. The entire nation will sexualize her and call her names. Trump will do the same thing that he did to then-candidate Hillary Clinton: tell her to smile while calling her a “nasty woman.”

Don’t we all remember what happened to former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin when she was Sen. John McCain’s VP pick? People called her sexy and ignored her genuinely appealing policies. She was written off as a hot lunatic the second after she was picked, and worse might happen to Klobuchar.

As a quiet and relatively unproblematic politician, Klobuchar will be called boring, ugly and weak. Plus, half of the news about her will be about her outfits, not policy.

Finally, she may be famous to Minnesotans and even the Midwest, but she has little cultural influence compared to Senators Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren or even Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke. Klobuchar is simply not famous enough in states like Florida, Ohio or Pennsylvania.

Overall, Klobuchar is an amazing politician who brings people together to make reasonable change, but supporting her run for president is a miscalculation and a mistake.