This Amy Klobuchar could beat Trump. Where has she been all year?

But in the intervening year, that Amy Klobuchar seemed to vanish; the stand-in she sent out was a moderate too restrained to keep the other Democratic candidates from talking over her on stage. That’s who I saw on the stump in Iowa: A senator whose platform was eminently sensible, and far more likely to actually pass than the radical promises of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). A woman whose vision was far more practical than the bafflegab former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg offered about ushering in a vague — but golden! — new era in Washington. But also, in some voters’ eyes, a nice lady who wasn’t going to be president.

All that changed in a single debate last Friday night, when the old Amy, with the courage born of desperation, stormed out on stage and made her case forcefully for pragmatic moderation rather than glittering impracticalities. And darned if it doesn’t seem to have worked, at least on New Hampshire voters, many of whom told exit pollsters that they made up their minds in the final days before the primary. As of this writing, there are still many votes to be counted, but it’s nonetheless clear that Amy Klobuchar has come in third in New Hampshire — and tantalizingly close to Buttigieg and Sanders.

The question is whether she has enough time left to get this done.