Amy Klobuchar 2020 campaign megathread

[Florida Man for Crime]

Everyone in the Klobuchar crowds that I can see is an old. This isn't really meant as a criticism, just an observation - it is fairly normal that supporter demographics vary and that crowds at these sorts of things skew old, but it seems to be complete/universal from what I can see.

[Florida Man for Crime]

What's interesting with this is that at every event you get a caucus card and if you want to commit you give your details over so for the past 3-6months she's been picking up all these endorsement cards and data points so will have a list of everyone in each county that will or won't caucus for her.

That is not really interesting, it is par for the course. That is how every single remotely serious Iowa caucus campaign works, and how they have worked in previous campaigns going back decades.

100 organizers is good, but other campaigns will also (or should also) have that. And they will also have organizers in other early states in similar sorts of #s, which presumably Klobuchar does not have due to greater financial constraints for her.

[Florida Man for Crime]

What's interesting with this is that at every event you get a caucus card and if you want to commit you give your details over so for the past 3-6months she's been picking up all these endorsement cards and data points so will have a list of everyone in each county that will or won't caucus for her.

That is not really interesting, it is par for the course. That is how every single remotely serious Iowa caucus campaign works, and how they have worked in previous campaigns going back decades.

100 organizers is good, but other campaigns will also (or should also) have that. And they will also have organizers in other early states in similar sorts of #s, which presumably Klobuchar does not have due to greater financial constraints for her.

When that doesn't really work because Amy is the only person to have gone and campaigned in all 99 counties. Pete is on 49 counties. So she has campaigned in 50 more counties than Pete and all the other major candidates (all were in the 40s as of last week).

Look I'm not saying Amy is going to win Iowa! I'm just saying her campaign is go where its difficult, go where its rural and ask for their vote. Nobody else is doing that they just want to campaign where its easy. lets see what happens. I don't understand how anyone with a brain can honestly go to the polls and with a choice of Warren, Biden, Yang, Klobuchar, Sanders, Booker, Steyer go hmm I'M going to vote for a 37 year old gay dude from Indiana who lost a state race by 25 pts lost the DNC Chair and was a mayor of a town that hasn't voted Republican since the 1970s.

Other campaigns also have organizers in rural counties, and also have a campaign presence in those counties in numerous other ways (TV ads, mail, campaign events with surrogates, etc). The only difference is that the candidates didn't personally go to each of those small rural counties.

I would tend to agree personally with your substantive points against Buttigieg, but that doesn't have anything to do with this.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Can this thread be pinned? Where is Klobuchar focusing her last campaigning etc this week, and does that tell us anything about her strategy?

[Florida Man for Crime]

She was in Bettendorf this morning. He next event is in Sioux City later today.

Here is a guess for why she would be campaigning in those eastern cities, other than the fact that they have a lot of people, obviously.

If she is surging, those are probably the areas where she would have the most difficulty getting over the 15% viability threshold. So I think maybe she is thinking that if she is surging, she will be viable elsewhere and needs to make sure she is also viable in the more progressive cities, so that she doesn't end up losing delegates from lack of viability in precincts.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Election Update: Is Klobuchar Having A Last-Minute Surge In Iowa?

To quote Buffalo Springfield, “there’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.” What is clear, though, is that Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s poll numbers are on the rise in Iowa — she’s now at 10 percent in our Iowa polling average, and her chances of winning the most votes in Iowa have ticked up to 3 percent in our primary forecast.

...

But taken together with other Iowa polls that have dropped this week, we can’t dismiss the possibility that Klobuchar is having a last-minute rise that could put her in contention to finish better than fifth, where she’s been ranked in Iowa for a while now. And a higher-placed finish could have long-term ramifications if it keeps Klobuchar in the race well beyond Iowa and hurts someone else’s standing in the process.

A late surge for a candidate in Iowa wouldn’t be unprecedented either. Some notable past shifts include the 2004 Democratic race, in which John Kerry and John Edwards ended up capturing 38 and 32 percent of the vote, respectively, after polling at 24 and 19 percent going into the caucuses. And then, of course, there is the 2012 GOP contest, when Rick Santorum made a remarkably late push and actually won the caucuses with around 25 percent support despite polling at 13 percent going into caucus night. (It took a couple of weeks for the voting count disputes to settle.)

So we’ll be very interested to see whether the final survey from Selzer & Co. on behalf of CNN, the Des Moines Register and Mediacom also shows a notable improvement for Klobuchar tomorrow. (She was at 6 percent in their last survey from earlier this month.) Other polls, too, could show more Klob-mentum — or tamp it down. But for the moment, it does look like there’s something to Klobuchar’s upswing in the polls, and it’s a reminder that Iowa still is pretty wide open.

[Florida Man for Crime]

http://www.startribune.com/amy-klobuchar-faces-final-iowa-verdict/567492902/

But in a symbolic victory for Klobuchar, Kelly Shaw, the Republican Mayor of Indianola, announced Friday that he will switch parties and caucus for Klobuchar.

A Klobuchar adviser said that caucus night organizing has focused in part on rural areas and Iowa's northern swath, along the Minnesota border. The campaign also sees fertile ground in more blue-collar, older cities like Waterloo and Davenport, as well as suburban areas around Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

It's a sound but potentially risky strategy, said Christopher Larimer, a political-science professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

"It would have to a be a pretty good sweep" of rural areas, plus "finishing first or second in most of northern Iowa," Larimer said.

"The big question for me is how does she do in the suburbs. I think she'll do well in rural areas," said Jeff Link, an Iowa strategist who worked for Obama's winning Iowa caucus campaign in 2008.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Klobuchar is leading Biden so far in the official results. Klob got 2 people to caucus for her in the Satellite caucuses, Biden got 0.

This is it! KLOBMENTUM IS HERE!

[Florida Man for Crime]

Klobuchar:  To forget, specifically, to forget some information you really ought to know.

Klobuché el nombre de mi hijo

Mi amiga Klobuchó la dirección de su propia casa

Amy ha Klobuchado que México existe

Between this and some other recent posts, you are starting to become a genuine quality poster, keep it up. Beautiful.

[Florida Man for Crime]

The Minnesota senator’s campaign will start airing TV and digital ads on Thursday in Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia. The campaign did not share details about how they will divvy up the buy among the states.

[/quote]

Those are mostly southern states, with the exception of ME and OK, all have quite large African American populations.

That makes this a risky strategy for her. To be viable, she needs 15% support in each of those states. In particular in states with large African American populations, Klobuchar may struggle to be viable if she doesn't get a reasonable amount of support from Black voters. So it looks like she is taking a risk and hoping to do well enough to be viable even in states like Alabama where there is a strong chance that she won't be viable. In other words, this looks as though she is going for a win of some sort, as opposed to merely trying to pick up delegates. Because in quite a few of those southern states/congressional districts, she will probably get 0 delegates unless she surges in general by a substantial amount nationally (particularly with black voters). If she were only trying to win delegates, then it would seem to be smarter to concentrate more of her advertising in states where she could expect to at least be viable, rather than wasting advertising on certain states like Alabama above all, but also probably TN/AR. Viability might be at least a bit more feasible in NC/VA due to greater #s of non-southern White Dems in those states.