RUTHFULLY YOURS

Several staffers HuffPost spoke to forcefully rejected such criticism.

“None of what we are saying has anything to do with Amy being ‘likable’ or ‘emotional’ or whatever other nonsense people throw out at women,” said a former female staffer. “It’s that she is a terrible manager and abusive to her staff. I can’t emphasize enough that there is a big difference between being demanding and being abusive.”

On Friday, The New York Times also published a new report with additional details on Klobuchar’s conduct, including her tendency to blame her aides for all of her problems, such as stymied political ambitions and the state of her marriage.

Klobuchar has responded to the reports by saying she is tough, not abusive. On Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, and in similar comments at a CNN town hall, she said, “I’m going to take the high expectations and bring them out to the country because if we want to really get these things done, some of these things should happen.”

While some writers and media outlets have expressed concern at Klobuchar’s treatment of her staff, plenty of political operatives and journalists have jumped to her defense. The arguments have largely broken down into three categories:

• The staffers clearly don’t know how to deal with a tough work environment. “She is also getting criticism, albeit anonymously, as a tough boss who mistreated her staff. She has had some of the highest staff turnover on Capitol Hill, but the stories would have more credibility if the critics lent their names. Perhaps the Senator is simply less tolerant of millennial demands,” wrote The Wall Street Journal editorial board in one such example.
• Ultimately, the stories don’t matter because regular voters won’t care and she’s still well-positioned to take on President Donald Trump. A Washington Post analysis asked whether it mattered that Klobuchar was a mean boss, and whether it would factor into her success as president: “Is how a person treats their staff a reflection of how they’ll perform in their job?”
• Klobuchar is a victim of sexism. In Politico, Jennifer Palmieri, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, wrote that there was “hidden sexism” in the media reports about Klobuchar. “I, like others, doubt that a male candidate with similar staff complaints would have seen them become the lead narrative of his presidential announcement,” she said, adding, “We still hold women in American politics to higher standards than men, which puts added pressure on female bosses.”

Many Klobuchar staffers who spoke to HuffPost requested anonymity to discuss their experiences because many of them still work in politics and fear retribution for speaking out against a powerful, popular senator.

Particularly frustrating for some of these staffers have been the charges of sexism. Many of the aides who spoke with HuffPost are women, who consider themselves feminists and have worked for other strong female politicians.

One former staffer called the Palmieri op-ed “offensive as fuck.”

“It’s not that there’s not merit to the argument that other men have been abusive and gotten away with it,” she said. “It doesn’t make it OK for anybody. We don’t say, we haven’t held men accountable in the past for this on Capitol Hill, so why start now?”

Indeed, the Klobuchar coverage has set off a discussion on whether a male presidential candidate would be getting the same media attention. While there’s no doubt that for years, working for a male politician with a temper was considered something of a badge of honor, that conception has been shifting. Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.), for example, was shamed in the press for misusing and mistreating his staff last year. There are plenty of other cases as well.