In the second leg of our Iowa presidential campaign road trip we left Altoona, Iowa early this morning for Cedar Rapids. There had been some overnight snow along Interstate 80.

Iowa [photo: Joan Ferguson].

Late this morning well over a hundred individuals (and quite a few media people) gathered in an upstairs meeting room in Cedar Falls, Iowa to hear from Senator Amy Klobuchar (D), a candidate for President in 2020.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D).

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D): [on education]…there are many paths to success in this country. There isn’t just one pat to success. And I see immigration reform as a part of this as well. Uh, we need workers in our factories, in our fields. We’ve got people here that are working in the shadows, right, and I believe comprehensive immigration reform is the answer. Just to give you a sense, the President always talks about it with security. Yes, we want to have security at the border. Not his wall, okay, that’s not what we need.[….][comprehensive immigration reform]… hundred fity-eight billion dollars in savings on that bill that passed the Senate, in ten years. People come out of the shadows, pay their taxes, hundred fifty-eight billion dollars in savings. Think about how that would help with the debt, think about how that would help our country. I see this as an economic issue. Twenty-five percent of our U.S. Nobel laureate were born in other countries. Nearly seventy of our Fortune Five Hundred company CEOs, state from a while back, born in other countries. Immigrants don’t diminish America, they are America….

…when they say there’s an urban rural divide. I will not do it. I go [in Minnesota] not just where it’s comfortable, I go where it’s uncomfortable. I visit every single county every year. I meet with Republicans, I meet with Independents, I meet with Democrats. I have people yell at me, I have people hug me. I don’t care. I think you have to get out there and you have to listen to people….

…and then I see these words on the wall [at the Carter Presidential Library], um, that they put up there, and this is before Trump. [….] Now it is so meaningful. It was Mondale, looking back at their four years….And the words on the wall said this: “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.” And I think that is a minimum that you should expect from any President and Vice President. And that is, that you try to keep the peace, and that you tell the truth, and you obey the law. And that is what I promise you I will do.

Early in the afternoon Senator Klobuchar walked in the Cedar Rapids St. Patrick’s Day parade with Linn County Democrats.