Klobuchar

Bernie Sanders claimed victory in New Hampshire this week, with Amy Klobuchar surging to a third-place finish behind fellow moderate Pete Butti­gieg. Editor-at-Large Errin Haines takes a closer look at Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, and whether their “endurance” approach to campaigning can translate into the momentum needed to win the Democratic nomination. Excerpts of her latest stories, published in The Washington Post, follow.

“Women are not momentum candidates. They have to prove themselves and win voters over, over the course of time. Men can get swept up in a tide of momentum that can carry them to the nomination. It’s different for women. They’re on a slow burn.”

“Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) inadvertently made these three words a battle cry in 2017 when he used them to describe his decision to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for criticizing the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to become attorney general.

Now, almost exactly three years later, the phrase seems to be a campaign strategy for Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), the two top-tier women in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

On Tuesday night, at the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, Klobuchar surged ahead, finishing third with 19.3 percent of the vote, with more than 91 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday morning.

Bounding onto the stage in Concord, N.H., on Tuesday night, joined by her husband, John, and daughter, Abigail, Klobuchar beamed as she addressed the crowd: “Tonight is about grit. And my story, like so many of yours, is one of resilience.”

Klobuchar stunned the political class with what looked like an overnight success, but it was all part of what she said has been her nomination strategy all along: slow and steady, not shock and awe.

Warren, whose mantra is “Outwork, Out-Organize, Outlast,” is taking a similar approach. While she finished third in the Iowa caucuses and fourth in New Hampshire, hours before the polls closed Tuesday, she rolled out her endurance strategy in a memo to supporters.

“The road to the Democratic nomination is not paved with statewide winner-take-all victories,” wrote her campaign manager, Roger Lau. The campaign’s focus “is on building a broad coalition to win delegates everywhere.” He further underlined the campaign’s marathon approach by pointing to Warren’s on-the-ground staff of 1,000 people in 31 states.

Klobuchar and Warren have both said they are running campaigns of durability, an approach that may favor female candidates who tend to be judged on performance rather than potential, said Democratic strategist Jen Palmieri.

“Women are not momentum candidates,” Palmieri said. “They have to prove themselves and win voters over, over the course of time. Men can get swept up in a tide of momentum that can carry them to the nomination. It’s different for women. They’re on a slow burn.”

Such a plan explains why Klobuchar — who came in fifth in Iowa but who, her campaign said, exceeded expectations with limited resources in the state — visited all 99 counties ahead of the caucuses and made nearly two dozen trips to New Hampshire, or why Warren spends hours taking selfies and connecting with voters on a personal level.

It may also signal a shift in voters’ perceptions of electability, which has heavily favored male candidates like former vice president Joe Biden — who abandoned the state for South Carolina hours before finishing fifth on Tuesday — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who won Tuesday’s primary, and former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, who came in a close second.