Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 presidential campaign

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard finally won some delegates: She came in second in the American Samoa caucuses on Super Tuesday, winning two pledged delegates.

That win doesn’t put her in contention for the nomination — she’d need 1,899 more delegates to become the nominee — but under the rules for the last Democratic debate, it would get her on the stage.

Hillary Clinton emerged from relative political obscurity last week to claim that Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic presidential candidate and member of Congress from Hawaii, was “the favorite of the Russians” prepping for a third-party spoiler run during a podcast interview. She went so far as to imply that the representative was “a Russian asset.”

Gabbard fired back by calling Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.” In Gabbard’s telling, her party’s 2016 nominee was behind “a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation ... through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine.”

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “the queen of warmongers” Friday in response to comments Clinton made about Gabbard on a podcast earlier in the week. The attacks marked the latest clash between the representative from Hawaii and top Democrats over her controversial foreign policy views, which at times have aligned more with conservatives than members of her own party.

The spat began when Clinton, speaking on the podcast Campaign HQ (hosted by former Obama aide David Plouffe) said Gabbard is “the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.

The only two veterans on the Democratic debate stage this week were also the only two to commit to withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan within their first year as president if elected.

On Tuesday night, Pete Buttigieg — the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who served as a naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan — vowed to bring all American service members home from that country during his first year in office after being pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

At the first Democratic primary debate, it was clear the main goal for several candidates was to merely get their name on the national radar.

The crowded stage of 10 made it especially difficult. But a few candidates found a way to stand out.

2020 Democratic candidates were surprisingly critical of the Iran nuclear deal during the first presidential debate.

Signed by the Obama administration in 2015, the accord between Iran, the US, European powers, Russia, and China put tight restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The Obama administration’s goal was to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon diplomatically instead of by force.

When Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was first elected to Congress in 2012 amid an ocean of positive press, the Iraq War veteran seemed like a sure thing for a 2020 presidential run. But her 2020 campaign has, so far, been a nearly complete nonstarter — averaging under 1 percent in national polls.

That’s because the onetime progressive star has alienated many of her early supporters over her conservative stances on Islam and foreign wars.

The fifth female lawmaker to enter the 2020 presidential race officially announced her candidacy on Sunday — and remarkably, this historic moment doesn’t even seem like a huge deal.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) joined the ranks of top-tier Democratic women to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, highlighting her working-class roots and wide regional appeal at a wintry campaign launch event in Minneapolis on Sunday.