Klobuchar says she will kick off campaign in Wisconsin, alludes to 2016 controversy

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced on Sunday she was kicking off her campaign for president in Wisconsin, while making an apparent allusion to criticism over former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s decision not to visit the state extensively during the 2016 election.

“We’re going to be in Iowa and in Wisconsin,” Klobuchar said during her campaign unveiling in Minneapolis.

“I think we’re starting in Wisconsin because as you remember there wasn’t a lot of campaigning in Wisconsin in 2016. With me, that changes.”

{mosads}Her comment comes as her party hopes to win back voters in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, traditionally Democratic strongholds they lost to President Trump in 2016. 

After winning the Democratic primary in April 2016, Clinton did not visit Wisconsin.

Trump on the other hand visited the state five times after the Republican convention in July 2016. He would go on to defeat Clinton by 47.2 percent to 46.5 percent in the state during the general election.

Clinton was criticized after Trump’s victory for not focusing more of her campaign’s energy on states like Wisconsin and Michigan, with some arguing her failure to do so cost her the election.

She addressed the Wisconsin loss in her 2017 book “What Happened.” 

“If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won,” Clinton wrote. “With a margin like that, everyone can have a pet theory about why I lost. It’s difficult to rule anything out. But every theory needs to be tested against the evidence that I was winning until October 28, when [former FBI Director] Jim Comey injected emails back into the election.”

Klobuchar did not mention Trump or Clinton by name in her campaign launch speech.

The Minnesota Democrat will also be visiting Iowa in the upcoming week, a sign that she is focusing on the midwest as her base, at least as of now.

Many of the other candidates who have announced their campaigns, like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), represent coastal states.

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) has made his ties to the Midwest a central part of his presidential campaign that he announced recently.