Amy Klobuchar hears America singing.

She's getting snow covered and quoting Walt Whitman as she announces her candidacy...



The event is over now, so I've taken down the link to the live feed. I didn't get to hear much of the speech, but the heavy snowfall was a fantastic touch. Loved it. And loved the quoting of Whitman. She recited the first line of the poem that I'll reprint in full:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Beautiful... but I hear the poem crying out for parody. When I got to "The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam," I wanted to rephrase that to include Jeff Bezos. Is that wrong? I feel that the nighttime party of Whitman's young, robust, friendly fellows would make that poem into a bawdy song lampooning the billionaires and politicians.

ADDED: Here's the full video.



I'll watch it now and update with any useful thoughts that occur to me.

ADDED: She began with a lot of boring thank yous and an emphasis on the location on an island in the Mississippi River. Then there was a lot of talk about the Mississippi, which contained the names of many states, and lead to the observation that the river ties us together.

"As your President, I will look you in the eye, I will tell you what I think, I will focus on getting things done. That's what I've done my whole life. And no matter what, I'll lead from the heart." That seemed worth transcribing, but it doesn't mean much other than as a slight cue to think of her as pragmatic. She proceeds to a lot of policy positions, none of which stood out to me as especially striking. Health insurance. Big Pharma. Common-sense gun legislation. Respect our troops.

She says that if we see obstacles in our path, we should think of the obstacles as the path. That's not the practical way to walk over a real landscape.

She rejects "foreign policy by tweet." And — since we're alluding to Trump — "Stop the fear-mongering and stop the hate."

She botches the translation of "E pluribus unum" and says "Out of one..." before correcting herself to "Out of many, one." That motto seems politically incorrect, no? But she called it "our North Star."

She was reasonably okay. And I loved the snow! I wish she'd ad libbed some wisecracks about it. Imagine what Trump would say if he found himself in an ever-increasing snow storm? I know what Trump said about Amy in the snow:

Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!