Discussion: Klobuchar: Being Mean To My Staff Proves I Can Deal With Putin

Somehow or another she’s got to move past this even if it means being mean to reporters.

11 Likes

“I’m meaner than Donald Trump” is hardly a winning argument

35 Likes

No, Amy. Being mean to your staff means you’re insecure, drunk on power and a tactless skank.

30 Likes

“High standards” is one thing.
“I kick down so I can stand up to Putin” is disqualifying–as a character trait and as a message.

28 Likes

Abusing subordinates who are dependent on you for their jobs isn’t “tough.”

28 Likes

Bye-bye, Klobacher.

Being in denial means you can’t address the underlying problem.

No room for toxic bosses, we’ve got plenty of good candidates to pick from.

Obama did just fine with Putin, I don’t remember any stories about him abusing his staff.

45 Likes

are you missing a quote there TPM because that’s not what she said. At least as far as what you quoted

5 Likes

Putin would bring her a fork by God, and then she’d shove it in his eye!!!

1 Like

I really wanted to back Klobuchar for president, but this thing with her staff–and the fact that we don’t have former staffers lining up to campaign for her or go on talk shows to defend her–makes me think she is not the right person for the hardest job in the world. If she goes off on her Senate staff under the pressure there, what would she do as president, where the pressure is orders of magnitude greater?

23 Likes

She’s a non-starter. And this is ridiculous.

10 Likes

My original take on this story was that it was massively overblown. Upon further consideration and having read some of the accounts, it seems like a bigger issue. These are not the signs of a competent manager.

19 Likes

Funny, that’s the same argument Trump made when he was being a prick to other candidates, insulting Jeb Bush’s demeanor or the looks of Ted Cruz’s wife, and he ended up caressing Putin’s balls.

9 Likes

Bloody hell. This doesn’t mean you’re tough. It only means you are an insufferably exhausting kind of toxic person to work for.

33 Likes

Sheesh. What a remarkably poor way to put that.

Better candidates consider how things may sound before they say them.

9 Likes

This made me laugh. Okay, lady. This argument is just dumb. Being mean to subordinates doesn’t mean you can deal effectively with the crafty leader of a foreign country.

6 Likes

She’s a bad boss, she admits it. Next question is do we want a chief executive who’s a bad boss. I sure don’t.

She needs to stifle her huge ego and stop running. She should realize that the way people are treated really matters, and if she hasn’t learned by now how to be reasonable with everyone, treating everyone with respect, then she never will.

Not to mention the fact that thus stuff is very likely to keep dribbling out. The press sure won’t let it go, no matter what one thinks about that. People she’s treated like shit will have their day, and she obviously has it coming. Let’s elect a nice person. That doesn’t mean they’re not smart, nor tough. Hell, Ronald Reagan was caught wiping the floor of his hospital room when he was president. He said he didn’t want someone to have to clean his mess. Klobachar maybe could enter a monastery for 5 or 6 years and maybe actually mature to the point where she needs to be. But that’s about it.

12 Likes

Great f’in picture. That’s the way to meet his eyes.

Putin sure looks more comfortable in More recent pictures.

7 Likes

I don’t care about this issue. There is no correlation between how one treats staff and job performance in terms of results for customers. Clearly, there are staff who like working for her and who can handle her approach to managing people. The articles that have been written about this issue have mixed Veep level stuff with other stories that intimate something more serious but no formal allegations of misconduct. We’re not working for Amy. She’d be working for us. It’s not relevant to me in terms of selecting a candidate.

That said, I don’t think Amy should make light of it in this way. I don’t think that’s good politics. I think she needs to shut the convo down, double down on what makes her an effective politician, get some improvement in the polls and go out and win the Iowa caucuses. Then, after she establishes some track record of winning and a following, she can do the SNL skit that puts that issue into a humorous context.

7 Likes

Trump is a doofus who is unable to fire a person face to face when he wants to. Mostly he wants to fire for the wrong reasons but the caliber of his staff could be vastly improved by lots of judicious firings.

Klobuchar would not have that problem.

1 Like