CLARION, Iowa _ With the smell of manure hanging outside in the cold air, Amy Klobuchar walked into Timbukbru, a bar so remote that its slogan reads, "Welcome to the other middle of nowhere."
After greeting the 20 local Democrats waiting inside, the Minnesota senator started sipping a beer, cracking open peanut shells and ticking through several top issues in her campaign for president. After explaining she favored improving Obamacare over passing "Medicare For All," McKinley Bailey nodded in approval.
"That's why you're in my top three," Bailey, a 39-year-old former Iowa lawmaker, told the senator.
"Ohhhh, the ultimate compliment," Klobuchar exclaimed, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "In New Hampshire, there was a guy who said I was in his top two, but he was 11 years old. That was an all-time low, but better to be in the top two, right?"
The bar erupted in laughter, but Klobuchar's joke served as only a momentary respite from an ongoing challenge for her presidential bid: converting Iowans who have her on their shortlists into committed voters.
Locking in such support has proven difficult for many candidates in the extremely fluid race, with polls showing about two-thirds of Iowans still willing to change their minds before they vote in just two months. With less money and more ground to make up than the race's leading contenders, the margin of error is particularly slim for Klobuchar if she is to survive beyond Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 3.
Complicating matters, Klobuchar acknowledged, is that she often finds herself in the political paradox of voters liking her but unwilling to commit because they're not sure she has a chance to win. Her chances to win, of course, only improve when such voters decide to back her.
"It is so hard, because from the beginning I always knew I would not be in the top two or three, because of the fact that I wasn't running for president forever and I wasn't as well-known," Klobuchar said in an interview as she campaigned across Iowa last week. "So, here I am at No. 5 and moving up, and people are going to have to look at me in that way. We still have a lot of people who are undecided, and so that's my case to make, and I'm going to make it."
For months, the race has featured the front-running foursome of South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, followed by the rest of the jumbled field of 15 candidates.
Through much of 2019, Klobuchar slowly and steadily has made her way through that pack to a position she hopes will make it possible for her to be the latest to join the club of late-surging surprise candidates in Iowa's notoriously turbulent caucuses.
There are some signs of momentum for the Minnesota moderate.
At a time when many candidates in that group are stagnating in the polls and struggling to keep their campaigns financially afloat, Klobuchar's operation is growing. She is one of just six candidates who has qualified for the December debate and is in the midst of doubling her Iowa campaign offices to more than 20, doubling her paid staff in New Hampshire and has hired up in the other early states of Nevada and South Carolina.
She also has been on the move in the polls, with a recent survey by The Des Moines Register and CNN showing her support doubling to 6% since September. That placed her in fifth place, 3 percentage points ahead of the next closest candidates, but still trailing Buttigieg with 25%, Warren with 16% and Biden and Sanders each with 15%.
Klobuchar is seeking to fill a moderate lane where others also see opportunity, as Biden's poll numbers continue to slide and his fundraising lags behind the other three front-runners. That's led billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and onetime Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick both to make late entries into the race, further crowding the picture moving forward for Klobuchar.
She has, however, outlasted candidates who began the race with larger national profiles, including former Texas U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and California Sen. Kamala Harris, who dropped out of the race Tuesday amid dwindling funds, staff cutbacks and campaign dysfunction. Nor has Klobuchar had to launch last-ditch fundraising appeals to stay in the race, like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, another high-profile candidate who is in danger of not qualifying for the next debate.
"I don't think people thought I was going to do this," Klobuchar said when asked how she's maintained a viable campaign. "But that's what happens to me a lot. I get underestimated, and I just keep going."
