Klobuchar Saved Her Campaign By twisting the words of her opponent [View all]

[MBS]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/klobuchar-saved-campaign-new-hampshire-buttigieg-attack.html

This is not ordinary elbow-jabbing, but deliberate deception. Unacceptable behavior.

Amy Klobuchar had a great night in New Hampshire. In the three days before the primary, the Minnesota senator surged from the middle of the Democratic presidential pack to third place, behind Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. According to exit polls, Klobuchar captured many of the moderates, independents, and late deciders Buttigieg had hoped to win. By depriving him of victory and finishing close behind him, Klobuchar has positioned herself to compete with Buttigieg in the states that follow. How did she do it? By outshining her competitors in a debate on Friday night. In a dramatic exchange, Klobuchar rebuked Buttigieg for belittling the Senate impeachment trial. In the debate and in subsequent TV interviews, she used his impeachment comments to portray him as unserious. It was a clever attack. It was also deceptive.

Here’s what happened. On Jan. 25, a woman at a town hall in Carroll, Iowa, asked Buttigieg about the Senate trial. “If you’re like me, watching this impeachment process is exhausting,” he replied. “It’s demoralizing.” Buttigieg said the trial “makes me want to change the channel and watch cartoons.” The audience laughed, but he explained that this desire to turn away was the problem. “The cynics win,” said Buttigieg, “if they get us to switch it off.” Instead, he urged voters to hold President Donald Trump and Republican senators to account. Politico reporter Elena Schneider attended the event and tweeted Buttigieg’s response: “That’s how we win: To refuse to walk away. How they win, how the cynics win: if they get us to switch it off.”
. . .
Anyone who attended these events or watched videos of them knew that Buttigieg was saying Americans shouldn’t turn away from the trial. But Klobuchar, by taking his reference to cartoons out of context, inverted the meaning of his words. In an NBC interview, she described his message as “Let’s turn off the TV or go flip the channel and watch cartoons.” She contrasted this glib remark, as she presented it, with her own solemn responsibilities. “I have a job to do. I am in the arena,” she said. After the interview, Klobuchar’s communications director tweeted out her jab about cartoons.. .

On Jan. 29, at a town hall in Ames, Iowa, Buttigieg made his meaning unmistakable. He cautioned against the “temptation” to “switch [the trial] off and walk away.” Again, his remarks were posted on the Internet and tweeted by the press. But Klobuchar repeated her caricature.. . But Klobuchar didn’t let up. On Jan. 31, she repeated that voters “want someone with the experience of standing up and not just saying, ‘Oh, turn the channel and watch some cartoons.’ ” On Feb. 2, she boasted that unlike Buttigieg, who had suggested “watching cartoons,” she was “in the arena” and “getting things done.”