Klobuchar: Women Presidential Candidates Are Held to ‘Different Standard’ Than Men

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a 2020 presidential hopeful, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that female candidates are held to a “different standard” than men.

Klobuchar was talking to Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” when she brought up South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. She told Tapper that she and the other women running for president, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson would not be “standing on that stage if we had the [same] experience” as Buttigieg. 

“I’m the one from the Midwest that has actually won in a statewide race over and over again,” Klobuchar said in the interview. “I also am someone that has passed multiple bills as a lead Democrat, important bills in Washington, D.C. He’s had a different experience.”

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These comments echo what Klobuchar said back in June when she said: “I don’t think people would take us seriously.”

Last weekend during Buttigieg’s three-day campaigning bus tour through Indiana, he was asked if a woman with his exact same experience would be given the same consideration. He said he didn’t know.

“I’ll say that if a female mayor from my generation from the industrial Midwest with the message and vision that I am putting forward and a war record and all the rest of it emerged, I would have thought twice about whether to compete with her or whether to just support her campaign,” Buttigieg said, according to CNN.

Buttigieg did acknowledge sexism in politics on Monday.

“I think, obviously, sexism is a force in politics,” he said. “I also believe that I’ve gotten to where we’ve gotten to by having the right message, the right organization, reaching out to voters and convincing more and more of them to join this vision. And if I can continue to do that, then we’ll win, and if I can’t, well, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

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