Sunday School 9/8/19

This morning, we'll spend some time with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who talked with Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, and with Jake Tapper on CNN, where Julian Castro also made a classroom stop today. He was a feature last week; you can read that here.

First up, MTP. Her segment started with a video of her making these comments:

I do believe I may be more moderate in tone than some of the people running for office. But I am betting that people don't want the loudest voice anymore. They've had that right now. That's the guy in the White House. That they want someone who's going to be honest with them and tell them that, "No, we are not going to erase rich kids college debt." We're not going to do that, even though some of my opponents have put that forward as their proposal.

Todd asked her if she thought she might get fallout from those comments. Klobuchar said she didn't think so, because the party will eventually unify behind someone and will clearly show the difference between the Dem and the serial liar currently in the Oval Office. And, she said,

... what I meant by that (comment) is that we need to have a candidate that will lead, that will look people in the eye and tell them the truth, and that isn't going to make a bunch of promises that they can't keep. And I truly think they want something different than Donald Trump.

And if I interpreted her comments correctly, she's not a big fan of sitting back and doing nothing for the next 14 months, and that she's more interested in seeing Mitch McConnell do his job than she is watching him sit around waiting for the president to pull his strings. And, about the upcoming debate, she's prepared, and

...We don't want to find out that we win at 4 in the morning or the next day. We want to win big and also carry the US Senate. And the way you do that is with a candidate that has a proven record of bringing in Independents and moderate Republicans that deserted our party in 2016... You add to an ignited Democratic base that wants to win big. And you win big...

And then we got to the stupid 'baiting' question Todd asks every week. This week's edition? Does Klobuchar think she's a stronger candidate than Joe Biden. She tried to dodge him, because what on earth does he think the answer is, no? She tried to provide a nuanced answer, but gave up.

Oh, Okay - I believe I'm stronger than all the other candidates or I wouldn't be running, alright?

After some more dilly-dallying from Todd, asking her about the other candidates, crowd size, and meaningless polls, he asked her about Afghanistan and the supposed talks that were to have occurred this week and what her position was. 

In a nutshell: bring the troops home. But also, stop paying attention to every shiny thing (buying Greenland, Sharpie-gate) and focus on what's important.

Yes, you negotiate with the Afghan government and the Taliban. But you don't treat this like some kind of game show when you're dealing with terrorists. He clearly wanted this showman's moment of having them come to Camp David, when he didn't even have a complete ceasefire. He didn't have the deal done. And then he does a tweet, late on Saturday saying, "Oh," blaming them, "Oh, it's over." Give me a break. This is exactly what he did with Kim Jong-un, bringing a hot dish to the dictator next-door, across the DMZ... We need to bring some credibility back into our foreign policy.

Moving to State of the Union and her interview with Jake Tapper, where she talked about the alleged peace talks between the US, the Taliban, and the Afghan government. Here's a bit of that, picking up after she reiterated her support for bringing our troops home.

But this time, you see again that he (Trump) has some kind of hastily arranged summit, which no one knew was happening, OK. But he didn't even seem to have an agreement or even close to an agreement when he set the summit. 

Then the excuse that's used to end the summit and take it down is the fact that, tragically, an American service member died, as well as other civilians. But then, they kept negotiating after that happened, through Saturday. So the whole thing doesn't quite make sense to me. And it's just another example of the president treating foreign policy like it's some kind of game show.

On guns, Klobuchar supports an "immediate assault weapon ban" and she'd also look at a voluntary buyback through a government/private sector collaboration on funding, first, before considering a mandatory buyback. She's also supportive of magazine limitations. And,

The other thing that's the most important... is what's happening next week, three sensible bills on Mitch McConnell's desk, one, universal background checks, which the facts seem to indicate could have prevented that horrible killing in Odessa and Midland, since that man had failed the background check once, and then was somehow able to get a gun. Closing the Charleston loophole, as well as closing the boyfriend loophole, which is my bill, which is very helpful to prevent domestic homicides.

Tapper, too, tried to bait her with a Biden question; this time, it was whether she had any concern about Biden being able to beat Trump.

I'm running my own campaign. And I think one of the reasons we have these debates is so that people can make those assessments themselves... We're going to have to see which candidate emerges... but I'll make my case. I have a lot of energy. I'm someone that never stops working. I'm someone that is from the Midwest, the area that we had the hardest place winning in, in 2016... And I don't want to be president for half of America, Jake, I want to be the president for all of America. 

And she also reminded Tapper, and everyone else, that the way Democrats "win big" is to take back the Senate. 

My colleagues and I have been talking about gun safety and the assault weapon ban, major -- major action on climate change, immigration reform. If Mitch McConnell is still sitting there stopping everything, we're not going to be able to advance our progress that we need for our country.

Ain't that the truth. See you around campus.