Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has suspended her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Klobuchar’s exit from the race leaves her fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as the only viable woman vying to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The senator from Minnesota plans to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden, according to the Associated Press.
Klobuchar ran as an unapologetic moderate, frequently citing her track record of bipartisanship during her three terms in the Senate and criticizing progressive proposals like Medicare for All. She also touted her ability to win in the Midwest, where President Donald Trump won key states in 2016.
But the three top moderates in the race, Klobuchar, former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Vice President Joe Biden, split what some analysts believe to be the “moderate” vote, paving the way for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to win the most votes in the first three contests. The rise of former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a former Republican, further clouded Klobuchar’s prospects.
Buttigieg announced that he would drop out on Sunday, despite winning the most delegates in Iowa and tying for the most delegates in New Hampshire. Buttigieg is also reportedly planning to endorse Biden, Reuters reported.
Buttigieg often sparred with Klobuchar on the debate stage, as the two centrists argued over political experience, Klobuchar’s foreign policy chops, and Buttigieg’s military service.
Klobuchar also fended off criticism over reports that she mistreated her Senate staff and threw objects at aides during fits of anger. Klobuchar argued that many of her top aides have been with her for years though reports say that she has one of the highest staff turnover rates in Congress.
More recently, the former prosecutors was dogged by criticism over her handling of a 2002 case in which a black teenager was accused of fatally shooting an 11-year-old girl. Klobuchar cited the case as an example of her toughness on crime but the Associated Press reported that new evidence in the case raised questions of whether the teen was railroaded by police. Klobuchar said she backed an investigation into the new evidence but was forced to cancel a rally in Minneapolis on Sunday in response to protesters angry over the case.
Though Klobuchar struggled to win over a sizeable number of voters, she racked up a number of newspaper endorsements from outlets like the New Hampshire Union Leader, Iowa’s Quad-City Times, the Houston Chronicle, and the Seattle Times. She also earned a dual endorsement, along with Warren, from The New York Times.
Klobuchar struggled to keep up with the other candidates’ fundraising, bringing in roughly a quarter of what Sanders and Buttigieg raised in the last quarter. She said her performance at the New Hampshire debate and in the primary led to a major fundraising boost but she was unable to ramp up in must-win states before Super Tuesday.
The Sanders campaign slammed Klobuchar and Buttigieg for opting to endorse Biden after leaving the race.
“Anyone who thinks Biden would be a better candidate than Bernie against Trump hasn’t been watching the 10 Democratic debates,” campaign manager Faiz Shakir told NBC News. “Biden doesn’t have the record, vision, excitement, coalition that Bernie does. We need to do more than just defeat Trump. We need progressive change.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.