On the first point, she's not only a productive senator but she's great at maintaining a relationship with her constituents. Finding people in Minnesota who feel like they've received personal, responsive face time with her is incredibly easy. My wife's family and like half of their weird town talk about Klobuchar like she's their most successful friend from college. It's charming and unnerving at the same time, but the end result is that she comes across as both steady and reliable in the senate and deeply attuned to the needs of her own personal voters. No way to do that for three elections except work.

On the second point, the coalition of suburban centrists and non-dogmatic leftists has worked really well in Minnesota. It's not always successful, all the time, but I think it's done a pretty good job of keep psychotic chuds from getting enough foothold to seek national office. Michele Bachmann notwithstanding. And I don't think carpetbagging is going to work in Minnesota, so if serious challengers don't come out of the state GOP structure they're hard to find.

It's probably also helpful that the state has a pretty high standard of living (and has for awhile) that's made it hard for any of the far ends of the political spectrum to gain a small foothold. Doesn't mean nobody like that ever gets elected, but if there's no broad dissatisfaction with the current order then the political center looks more appealing - folks who can nibble and improve at the margins.

If any of that's true (which, shrug - it's been awhile since I've lived there but we go back a few times a year) then people can decide on their own whether what she's done is a useful analogy for other elections. Though I do wish they'd consider the abuse-of-staff thing as something more serious than just scandalcraft. Nobody should be allowed to treat workers that way.