Democrats’ theory on recent Kentucky election losses will be tested in 2016

After devastating statewide losses in the last two general elections in Kentucky, bluegrass Democrats are frantically trying to figure out how they can stem the rising Republican tide in what was once a stronghold for their party.

Jack Conway’s surprising loss to Matt Bevin in this year’s gubernatorial election, coupled with Alison Lundergan Grimes’ poll-busting failure to unseat incumbent U. S. Sen. Mitch McConnell last year, has the Kentucky Democratic Party scrambling to answer questions about their future.

One answer, frequently mentioned by the more liberal wing of the party, is that Conway and Grimes were too conservative. These activists believe the best way for Democrats to win elections in Kentucky is to nominate leftist candidates.

Republicans have to be salivating at those prospects. One can almost see the party leaders, in the best tradition of Brer Rabbit, yelling, “Please don’t throw us in that briar patch!”

For years I’ve maintained that Kentucky Democrats are nothing like their cousins from Massachusetts or San Francisco. Kentucky Democrats are generally much more conservative on cultural and moral issues than are Democrats on the coasts and in the northeast. Someone like the late Teddy Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi would have a great deal of trouble being elected anywhere in Kentucky besides the liberal enclaves of Louisville and a few ZIP codes in Lexington.

Conway and Grimes had to stake out positions to the right of the national party in order to have any chance at all of being elected in Kentucky. To do otherwise would have resulted in even greater losses than what they suffered. There aren’t enough true liberals in Kentucky who could have rallied to their sides to offset more conservative Democrats – what used to be called “blue dog Democrats” – who would either vote for the Republican who more closely represents their beliefs, or not vote altogether.

The Democrats’ theory got a bit of a test last year. Elisabeth Jensen, an Elizabeth Warren-wannabe, challenged first-term incumbent Andy Barr for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barr had defeated an incumbent with a golden Kentucky political surname, Ben Chandler, two years prior despite the 6th District having been gerrymandered to be more favorable to Democrats. Not only does it contain Democrat fortress counties like Franklin and Fayette, but three other counties where Conway beat Bevin (Bath, Bourbon and Nicholas). And that fails to mention Wolfe County, which is also now in the 6th District but has absolutely no business being there from either a geographical or sociological perspective, which also went for Conway over Bevin. Despite those advantages, Jensen lost to Barr by a larger margin than Grimes lost to McConnell.

If Kentucky Democrats need more liberal candidates to win elections, then why didn’t a liberal like Jensen beat Barr in a favorable district? Possibly because hard-core liberalism doesn’t go over well in most parts of Kentucky?

Liberal pundits and some activists, however, continue to pound home the point that liberal candidates can succeed; and are, in fact, the only obstacle keeping Kentucky from future Republican dominance. They’ll get a perfect chance to prove that assertion next year, when Democrat voters go to the polls in May to choose a presidential nominee.

To hear national liberal crusaders tell it, Sen. Bernie Sanders is the perfect candidate. He wants to tax everyone into oblivion and then give free stuff to everybody. He’s represented Vermont in the Senate as an independent for years, but he’s an admitted socialist, which would seem to make him the ideal candidate for the Democratic National Committee. Sanders makes Hillary Clinton, herself a fairly radical liberal, look like a conservative.

If Kentucky Democrats are serious about their party needing more liberal candidates, then they should turn out in droves to nominate Sanders. But that’s not likely to happen. Sanders will be lucky to pull 25 percent of the vote in May, and Clinton will win the Kentucky primary in a landslide. And then she will lose in the general election despite her husband’s sustained popularity here and despite the support of the state’s leading Democrats like Grimes and Greg Stumbo.

Democrats are losing their grip on power in Kentucky for several reasons. Not being liberal enough is not one of them. Much of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with them stems from their failure to move Kentucky forward despite decades of control. A sudden lurch to the left isn’t going to fix what’s wrong with their party or their policies.