Ever since former state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville lost his bid last year to be the latest Democrat to try and fail to unseat Mitch McConnell from the United States Senate, he's teased a potential run against Rand Paul for the junior senator's seat next year.
Today, Booker looked reality in the eye and pretended it doesn't exist. In the political equivalent of driving a fully loaded coal truck across a bridge marked with a three-ton weight limit, Booker embarked on his fool's errand to try to defeat Paul. It's a contest he has no chance of winning. If he is the Democrats' nominee for the Senate race next year, his loss to Paul will make Amy McGrath's defeat at the hands of McConnell look like a razor-thin margin.
McConnell didn't cruise to victory over McGrath last year because he's popular in Kentucky. Most Republicans merely tolerate McConnell, and many despise him. He won because Donald Trump had long coattails, and because the electorate was suffering voter fatigue from McGrath. She had just come off a loss in a congressional race where her television ads were omnipresent in a large area of Kentucky, and people were sick of hearing about her. "How many missions did she fly?" was a question often derisively asked because McGrath had harped on her record as a fighter pilot during her campaign loss to Rep. Andy Barr.
On the other hand, Paul is immensely popular with Kentucky Republicans, and he's cemented that popularity over the last year and a half. He's been a consistent voice for freedom, and withering in his criticisms of Gov. Andy Beshear and Dr. Anthony Fauci for the way they've responded to the Wuhan Chinese virus outbreak. He's even earning the respect of conservatives who had previously been skeptical of some of his more liberal-leaning libertarian views. If you polled Kentucky Republicans to ask their favorite Bluegrass politician or official, Paul would win easily. McConnell, who routed McGrath last year to win re-election, would finish behind several obscure state representatives.
And that brings us to voting patterns and party registration numbers. When I was growing up, Democrats had a lock on Kentucky politics. Republicans would occasionally win a Senate race, but they were a distinct statewide minority. Democrats held an advantage in registered voters of more than 2:1. Republicans outnumbered them only in the "old 5th" congressional district of south-central Kentucky.
Slowly but surely, voting numbers changed. McConnell defeated incumbent Dee Huddleston in 1984. Bill Clinton won Kentucky twice, but Al Gore from neighboring Tennessee did not. Republicans took Wendell Ford's old Senate seat when he retired. After a 32-year drought, a GOP governor was elected in 2003, along with two other statewide officials. The trend has continued over the past 18 years, with Republicans picking up a majority of the state's congressional seats and winning supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly despite those districts having been drawn by Democrats to provide their candidates advantages.
The state has trended more conservative in election results and attitudes, and voter registration numbers are finally catching up. The state Republican Party tracks the statistics, and they're mind-boggling. Since Barack Obama took office in 2009, Democrats have hemorrhaged registered voters while the GOP has racked up incredible gains. Not only are voters switching parties, but new voters are registering as Republicans. Trump's election brought a surge of new voters to the Republicans, as did Beshear's election.
That 2:1 advantage the Democrats held in my youth is gone. Republicans are now within two percentage points of taking the lead in registered voters. It's entirely possible that by the 2024 presidential election, the Republicans will have a majority of party registrations and Kentucy will truly become a red state. The numbers don't lie, and here they are:
So, this is the political environment into which Charles Booker enters. At a time when Kentucky is moving more to the right, the most liberal politician in the state thinks he can unseat a conservative hero. There's even talk that Booker is too liberal for Kentucky Democrats. So far, he's drawn no credible opposition. Ruth Gao, an unknown from Louisville, declared her candidacy first, but she is an unknown and doesn't have Booker's advantages of having used his run against McGrath last year to develop a statewide following. No other Democrats are even being mentioned as possible candidates.
If Booker wants to be realistic about his political future, a more appropriate race for him would be mayor of Louisville. His radical liberal politics are more in line with Jefferson County, and a significant portion of the electorate there, than they are the rest of the state. Booker's race-baiting, which he's doubled down on the past year, coupled with many of his extreme liberal policies, simply won't play in rural and small-town Kentucky except with the small pockets of ultra-leftists that are present in even the most conservative places.
Despite his unpopularity, McConnell embarrassed McGrath last year. Despite the left's wet dreams that Booker would have fared better, the truth is McConnell would have beaten him worse than he did McGrath. His defeat at the hands of Paul will be legendary.
Democrats really have no chance of unseating Paul next year. The incumbent has already been endorsed by Trump, who remains extremely popular in the Bluegrass State. Party leaders would be well-served to try to find a candidate who will fare better than Booker so at least they will be able to maintain some small amount of pride; to try to keep the margin of defeat respectable.
