Klobuchar's bronze is gold as Democrats awaken to a scrambled field

Now, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., does, too.Finishing third in New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday meant breathing a burst of life into her campaign and holding her most reviled rival, Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to a second-place showing.Her homestretch surge, fueled by a stellar debate performance Friday, appeared to be the key factor that robbed Buttigieg of the votes he needed to top Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The surprise star turn combined with the fading of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to catapult Klobuchar into the conversation about which bridge-the-divide candidate is best equipped to survive a long-slog campaign."The two of them are very likely to end up duking it out for the alternative spot between Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg," Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod said in reference to the billionaire former New York City mayor, who is sitting in third place in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.Stopping "Pete" made the night twice as sweet for Klobuchar.That's because there's no love lost between the pair, who have scrapped repeatedly on debate stages — at times in clearly personal terms — and whose teams find it inexplicable that anyone would regard the other candidate as a serious contender for the nomination.Klobuchar whacked Buttigieg during a debate here Friday night for dismissing her work and that of other senators in Washington, a theme she's touched on before.In particular, she noted with disdain that he had mused about preferring to watch cartoons to the Senate impeachment trial and then compared his Washington-bashing to the presidential campaign Donald Trump ran in 2016.This site is protected by recaptcha Privacy Policy | Terms of Service"It is easy to go after Washington because that's a popular thing to do," Klobuchar said.