Amy Klobuchar, White Knight
Senator Amy Klobuchar has officially asked Joe Biden to drop her from consideration to be his vice presidential running mate to go up against the Republican Trump-Pence ticket in November. Biden had committed to choosing a woman to be his running mate in the final debate against Senator Bernie Sanders, and Klobuchar had emerged as a leading contender in the past few months. She is now saying that she would prefer that Biden choose a "woman of color," which she is not.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Thursday night removed herself from consideration to be Joe Biden's running mate, citing the ongoing national discussion about racial injustice and police brutality to suggest the former vice president should choose a woman of color.
"This is a historic moment, and America must seize on this moment. And I truly believe as, I actually told the vice president last night when I called him, that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket," Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell.
"And there are so many incredibly qualified women, but if you want to heal this nation right now, my party ... this is sure a hell of a way to do it."
However, as CNN reported on June 4, in the wake of George Floyd's murder by then police officer Derek Chauvin Klobuchar's prospects to join the Biden ticket had dwindled considerably. From the Star Tribune:
The Floyd case has put the national spotlight back on Klobuchar’s days as a prosecutor, particularly as it became clear Derek Chauvin, the officer involved in Floyd’s death, was involved in the death of another citizen while Klobuchar was prosecutor. Chauvin was one of six officers who fired on and killed Wayne Reyes in 2006 after Reyes reportedly aimed a shotgun at police after stabbing his friend and girlfriend. While the death happened during Klobuchar’s tenure at the helm of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the case did not go to a grand jury until after she left the office and became a senator.
Klobuchar did not criminally charge other police involved in the more than two dozen officer-involved fatalities that occurred during her time as prosecutor. She left those decisions to a grand jury, a practice that was common at the time.
Klobuchar's response:
"This idea that I somehow declined a case, which has been reported on some news blogs and then set out on the internet, against this officer is absolutely false," she said on MSNBC. "It is a lie. I don't know what else to say about it, than it is a lie. ... I never declined the case, it was handled and sent to the grand jury by my successor, and he has said that. His office had said that it was not my place to make the decisions because the decisions were made when I was in the US Senate."
Whatever the truth of the situation, it's the perception that matters, and the perception could easily be that, but for Amy Klobuchar, George Floyd might be alive today. She had ample opportunity and plenty of reasons to prosecute Derek Chauvin and remove him from the Minneapolis police force prior to him murdering Floyd. That she chose not to is the type of baggage that Biden absolutely doesn't need to bring to his presidential campaign.
But despite the fact that they wrote that she was essentially out of the running to be chosen as the vice presidential nominee only two weeks prior, CNN still published a credulous fluff-piece promoting her statement as if she was seriously stepping aside for some high-minded ideal of wanting Biden to choose a woman of color.
The reality is that Amy Klobuchar is not stepping aside, and she's not sacrificing her own ambitions: She was not going to be chosen as the vice presidential nominee because her record as a prosecutor isn't in line with current Democratic Party political optics in the wake of George Floyd's murder. She is not "removing herself from consideration" because she was no longer in consideration, but by phrasing it that way she gets another round of glowing media coverage rather than being instantly forgotten as she otherwise would have been.
If Klobuchar actually believed the nonsense she's peddling here she never would have run for president in the first place, and she would have immediately endorsed someone like Kamala Harris or Tulsi Gabbard who both also ran for the Democratic nomination. She also wouldn't have endorsed Joe Biden upon dropping out of the race while Gabbard was still running.
It's also a wonder that this isn't called out for how offensive it is to women of color that Klobuchar believes she has to "step aside" so that they can have a chance because she'd otherwise be the logical choice is its own form of racism.
The media, however, promotes this type of vapid nonsense from certain politicians no matter how ridiculous or offensive it is on the face of it.