There has been a concerted effort to portray Amy Klobuchar as a brutal and mean boss who treated her staff poorly.
This has the smell of a classic oppo dump, using the media as accomplices. (In case you didn’t know, reporters are lazy, and if someone can spoon-feed them some oppo research, they’ll run with it with their own ‘investigation’ as cover.)
When she launched her campaign, Fuzzy asked whether Klobuchar was Minnesota Mean, or Minnesota Nice?
Having been reading for days about what a horrible human being she is, I was genuinely surprised to find Klobuchar so likable. It’s not hard to imagine that the oppo research dump came from one (or more) of her 2020 Democrat competitors trying to get a head start on undermining her genuine charm and appeal.Here are just a few of the stories that have been running across leftstream media:
- Amy Klobuchar: Bad Boss? – Bloomberg
- Does it matter if Amy Klobuchar is a mean boss? – Wapo
- Senator Klobuchar’s Staff Mistreatment Reportedly Goes Back a Decade, Includes Throwing Binders – The Intelligencer
- Staffers, Documents Show Amy Klobuchar’s Wrath Toward Her Aides – Buzzfeed
- Klobuchar’s opening pitch sidetracked by staff horror stories – Politico
- Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Mistreatment Of Staff Scared Off Candidates To Manage Her Presidential Bid – HuffPo
Given how well she comes across, it’s not that surprising that the opening salvo against her targets her likability.
The latest Klobuchar story is that when she was traveling with staff, an aide scurried with a salad for her onto the plane but dropped the plastic utensils. Klobuchar reportedly was furious, pulled a hair comb out to eat the salad, then forced her staff to clean the comb.
The NY Times reports, How Amy Klobuchar Treats Her Staff:
Senator Amy Klobuchar was hungry, forkless and losing patience.
An aide, joining her on a trip to South Carolina in 2008, had procured a salad for his boss while hauling their bags through an airport terminal. But once onboard, he delivered the grim news: He had fumbled the plastic eating utensils before reaching the gate, and the crew did not have any forks on such a short flight.
What happened next was typical: Ms. Klobuchar berated her aide instantly for the slip-up. What happened after that was not: She pulled a comb from her bag and began eating the salad with it, according to four people familiar with the episode.
Then she handed the comb to her staff member with a directive: Clean it.
The moment — an abridged version of which Ms. Klobuchar recounted herself in a speech to fellow Democrats at the time — encapsulates the underside of life on the Minnesota senator’s team, detailed in interviews with more than two dozen former staff members and internal emails reviewed by The New York Times….
Whoever tipped the Times off to this must have thought it was the coup de grâce for Klobuchar’s nascent campaign. “Stick a fork in her, she’s done,” or rather, “Stick a comb in her, she’s done.”
I’m not convinced it hurts her. In fact, I’d argue it helps her.
First, it gets her name out there. Lack of name recognition is her main problem. The more people are talking about her, the more voters recognize her name, and the more she is viewed as a serious candidate.
Second, it’s a reflection that other campaigns and the loony left are afraid of her. She is positioning herself as the not-completely-batshit-crazy progressive who can appeal to the center. If she’s catching flak, she’s over the target.
Third, being an overly tough boss is not a negative when it comes to a chief executive. She’s also flipping the narrative, framing it as having “high expectations” of people who work for her, and admitting that yes, she’s a tough boss.
This is not a bad persona for a candidate. I’m so old I remember when the persona of being the ultimate tough boss worked out pretty well for a political candidate.
Stick a comb in her?
Not yet.
Though it’s tough getting the image out of my head.
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