Sen. Amy Klobuchar qualifies for third, fourth Democratic presidential debates

WASH­ING­TON – Sen. Amy Klobuchar's cam­paign said Fri­day that she has met the re­quire­ments to par­tici­pate in the third and fourth Democratic pres­i­den­tial de­bates.

The Democratic National Committee set both poll­ing and fund­rais­ing thres­holds that can­di­dates must hit in ord­er to make the de­bate stage in Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber. Klobuchar pre­vi­ous­ly reached at least 2% sup­port in four early state or na­tion­al polls; now, her cam­paign said, the Min­ne­so­ta Democrat also has reached 130,000 in­di­vid­u­al donors to her cam­paign.

"We're thank­ful for the strong grassroots sup­port we've re­ceived from all across the coun­try as our mo­men­tum con­tinues to build head­ing into the fall," cam­paign man­ag­er Jus­tin Buoen said in a pre­pared state­ment. "Amy's de­bate per­form­an­ces have shown ex­act­ly why she is the strong­est can­di­date to take on Don­ald Trump, and she will con­tin­ue to hold him ac­count­a­ble for his di­vi­sive­ness and emp­ty prom­is­es."

Klobuchar is the eighth Democratic can­di­date to qual­i­fy for the Sep­tem­ber de­bate in Hous­ton, as well as the Oc­to­ber de­bate, for which a lo­ca­tion has not yet been an­nounced. To date, the oth­ers are Joe Bi­den, Bernie San­ders, E­liz­a­beth Warren, Ka­ma­la Har­ris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker.

In all, 20 Democratic can­di­dates par­tici­pat­ed in two de­bates over con­sec­u­tive nights this past week in De­troit. But pun­dits ex­pect many of those can­di­dates won't make the up­com­ing de­bates, which is like­ly to prompt the first ma­jor thin­ning of the cur­rent field.

In the se­cond Democratic de­bate this week, in De­troit, Klobuchar opt­ed to fo­cus her at­tacks on Trump rath­er than her Democratic ri­vals. In a news re­lease, Klobuchar signaled she in­tends to keep pur­su­ing that strat­egy in up­com­ing de­bates.

"While the de­bates are def­i­nite­ly a­bout show­ing dif­fer­ences of o­pin­ion on pol­icy, I think our time is bet­ter spent tak­ing it to Don­ald Trump in­stead of each oth­er," Klobuchar said.