Everyone Ran For President Last Night. OK, Just Kirsten Gillibrand.

All but three Dem members of Senate now in 2020 race.

Yesterday, it was looking like about 42 Democrats were going to announce a presidential run, but despite rumblings of candidacies from Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar, only Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand took the actual plunge (no actual plunging was involved).

Gillibrand, the junior US senator from New York, went on the "Late Show With Stephen Colbert" last night to announce she's running (or forming an exploratory committee, which really, same thing, but that's how it is done ). Gillibrand is fresh off winning reelection to the Senate, and likes to point out that she has voted against confirmation of Trump appointees more than anyone. Also, as she agreed when Colbert asked her, she likes to cuss, which makes her dear to the heart of Yr Wonkette.

Here's the video of Gillibrand's big announcement:

You want transcript? Here, have transcript!

I'm going to run for president of the United States, because as a young mom, I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I would fight for my own. Which is why I believe that health care should be a right and not a privilege. It's why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids because it shouldn't matter what block you grow up on. And I believe that anybody who wants to work hard enough should be able to get whatever job training they need to earn their way into the middle class.

But you are never going to accomplish any of these things if you don't take on the systems of power that make all of that impossible — which is taking on institutional racism, it's taking on the corruption and greed in Washington, taking on the special interests that write legislation in the dead of night. And I know that I have the compassion, the courage and fearless determination to get that done.

That's good stuff, though we hope that "young mom" bit won't come back to bite Gillibrand (she's 52), but politics being what it is, that may be all anyone will talk about. Meh, we're done with it.

Gillibrand has a strong record on important stuff like guns (an F rating from the NRA), immigration (hey, let's restructure ICE and not cage children! ) and health care (single payer ASAP), and has been a leader in the Senate on pushing the military to take sexual assault seriously.

Plus there's the wonderful cussiness, as we noted when she was running for reelection last fall:

[In a] nifty 2017 Rebecca Traister profile in New York magazine, we learn Gillibrand is the sort of person who realizes at 3 AM, " Oh my God, I've got to fucking order those [Girl Scout] cookies. I'm terrible!" then gets up and orders the fucking cookies, because that's what a responsible mom/Senator does (also because she also realizes that, as a US senator, you do not want to mess with Girl Scouts. It's not really about the cookies.) We're behind what Gillibrand says is her worldview of Senating: "[We're] here to help people, and if we're not helping people, we should go the fuck home." We would like that on a coffee mug.

We still want that mug! [ On it -- trix.] Gillibrand told Colbert that for the presidential campaign, she'll try to eschew the word that "rhymes with duck." Honestly, we don't see why.

In other presidential nearly runnings yesterday, MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes" teased an important announcement from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio several times, only for him to announce he's launching a "dignity of work listening tour." Brown plans to check in with a whole bunch of people about their jobs and Why Work Matters To Them, which of course is good. Oh, and since he couldn't just read Studs Terkel's Working again to learning about the importance of work, he'll be talking to folks in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Brown he says he's still just talking over a presidential run with Connie Schultz, his awesome spouse. No timeline for when Brown will drop the coy act and actually run.

In also not-quite running news, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said yesterday on the "Morning Joe" program that while she hasn't yet decided to run, her family is "on board" if she wants to, which some Twitter pundits said is the Minnesota equivalent of making a campaign announcement. She also had toshoot down a "campaign logo" that circulated on Twitter as nothing more than some really enthusiastic fan fiction that had nothing to do with her campaign, not that she even has a campaign, mind you, but she could. Then in the evening sheappeared on the "Rachel Maddow Show " to talk about the confirmation hearing for William Barr (she wasn't impressed). Maddow closed the interview by reminding her that when Klobuchar's ready to announce her exploratory committee, "you have to do it here, OK?" Klobuchar, a seasoned pro at noncommittally toying with Rachel Maddow, replied, "I will remember that. Thank you."

In short, there are a billion Democrats running in 2020 and we like all of 'em except Tulsi Gabbard and that one weird West Virginia state legislator who why is he even running, jeez, the end.

[ NYT / NPR / Politico / The Hill / Star-Tribune ]

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