Could Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar Make A Run In 2020?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar rarely makes cable news headlines. She isn't known as a partisan bomb-thrower, and doesn't use her time on the Senate floor for much grandstanding.

However, she was in the spotlight this week after asking Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanugh whether he had ever been blackout drunk. Klobuchar posed the question after making reference to her own father’s battle with alcoholism.

"I don’t know," Kavanugh responded. "Have you?" He asked her twice.

Kavanugh apologized to the Senator from Minnesota after a break. But Klobuchar later admitted she was "really stunned" by the nominee's behavior during the hearing.

Apparently, many Americans were stunned as well. But Klobuchar was praised for remaining poised throughout.

The moment was brief, but the Klobuchar-Kavanugh exchange quickly went viral. It even earned a spoof from Saturday Night Live:

In the Washington Post Sunday, Aaron Blake and David Weigel discussed Klobuchar's chances of becoming her party's nominee in the 2020 presidential election.

"Amy Klobuchar is clearly one of the most successful politicians to come out of the state since Walter Mondale and Hubert H. Humphrey. She owns the state politically," Lawrence Jacobs, a political expert at the University of Minnesota," told the Post.

"And it’s not force of personality; it’s channeling the concerns of Minnesota."

But in this age of hyper-partisanship, it's not clear if Klobuchar's pragmatic "Minnesota Nice" brand is what her party wants.

"While she’s a down-the-line Democratic vote, she doesn’t have an image here as the partisan bomb-thrower," Minnesota Republican consultant Mark Drake told the newspaper.

"I think Democrats are looking for someone who is the partisan bomb-thrower."

"She’s the senator next door, not the bomb-thrower next door."

Read much more at the Washington Post.

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Photo: U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) (C) leaves after Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve, along party lines, the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court September 28, 2018 at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump has ordered a one-week-long supplemental FBI background investigation into sexual assault allegations made against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) requested to delay the full Senate vote for the investigation. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)