Last week was a terrible one for Amy McGrath, the frontrunner for the Democrat Senate race in Kentucky.
On Tuesday, one of her opponents, State Rep. Charles Booker, received endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the editorial nod from the Lexington Herald-Leader. Two days later, Booker was endorsed by his hometown Courier-Journal in Louisville.
There's a reason Kentucky Republican operatives and Sen. Mitch McConnell campaign staffers greeted the avalanche of bad news for McGrath with glee.
Despite what some of her detractors say, McGrath is extremely liberal. She's certainly not a Trump supporter, as her opponents are claiming she is. But Booker and the other leading contender, Mike Broihier, are farther to the left than is McGrath. They're out of touch with the average Kentuckian.
And there's nothing that McConnell and the GOP would like more than for one of them to knock McGrath off and be McConnell's opponent this fall.
You have to think that the McConnell camp is looking at this surge of momentum for Booker at McGrath's expense and are doing their best Brer Rabbit imitation.
You know... this.
Despite what Booker's supporters may think, McGrath represents the best chance the Democrats have to defeat McConnell. Booker, and Broihier for that matter, are far too liberal for the average Kentucky voters. Booker will appeal to a certain constituency from his hometown -- indeed, he's used the current racial unrest to his full advantage to rally his core supporters -- but his ultra-leftist stances will hurt him in the rest of the state. There's really no difference between Broihier and Booker in terms of policy, but Booker's been out in front at various protests.
Kentuckians by and large don't support socialized medicine -- call it Medicare for all, single-payer, universal healthcare, or whatever you want -- nor a universal basic income. Yes, there's an entitlement mentality present among certain populations, but the majority of Kentuckians have a strong work ethic. They want to earn their keep and not have the government give it to them. And the Green New Deal would further damage the energy industry that's already reeling, especially since there's still plenty of coal (some estimates place the state's reserves at 150 years), and fracking for gas and oil hasn't even been explored yet in the state.
The chief knock on McGrath seems to be that she fits the mold of every Democrat that's run against McConnell and failed to unseat him, so it's time to try something different. At a time when Kentucky is trending more and more conservative, and Republicans aren't that far away from taking a majority in voter registrations for the first time, the idea that Democrats think they can win with a candidate from the extreme left seems to be fueled by a bad batch of hallucinatory drugs. Why would you think you could win an election with an extreme liberal in a state that's going in the opposite direction?
Of course, McConnell has to win renomination first, and he does face a primary. He's being challenged from the right by former state Rep. Wesley Morgan, but the overwhelming odds are that McConnell will win and be on the ballot this fall.
It's obvious that the McConnell camp regards McGrath as its biggest threat. His campaign ads have ignored the primary and have gone directly after McGrath. That's in contrast to six years ago, when he was running ads against his top intra-party challenger. Matt Bevin. This time around, McConnell has all but ignored the primary to get an early start on the general election.
Current polling indicates that despite the endorsements and some seeming momentum for Booker, he still trails McGrath with only a couple of weeks to make up the difference. And those endorsements likely won't mean much to Kentucky voters. Neither Bernie nor AOC are particularly popular in Kentucky, even among Democrats, and they will certainly turn voters off this fall if their candidate is the nominee. Sanders did overperform in the 2016 presidential primary, but that's only because he received votes due to the backlash from Hillary Clinton's comments about putting coal miners out of work. And newspaper endorsements don't carry much weight among the populace. The ultra-leftists among Kentucky Democrats might cheer the support from Bernie and AOC, but those endorsements will be a huge liability for Booker should he somehow manage to be the nominee.
If "Team Mitch" wasn't worried about McGrath's chances, its leading voices wouldn't have been cheering the Booker endorsements. If they really believe Booker to be a true threat, they wouldn't be applauding these developments. They would have stayed silent instead of taunting McGrath.
You have to think that the McConnell campaign is salivating at the thoughts of Booker being their opponent this fall. This state has not produced a more shrewd politician than Mitch McConnell. If he's happy about bad news for McGrath, there's certainly a message being sent.
