Yes Ashley, please run in Tennessee's 4th Congressional District. I've got a Senate I need to run after 2014.
Sorry Mitch. Can't do that! I'm going to go after you instead!
We still haven't heard the official announcement of Ashley Judd running. She's very likely to run or she could all of a sudden not run.
However, it appears Real Time with Bill Maher's writer, Chris Kelly, is drinking the cynic kool-aid in that he offers insufficient objective analysis in his Huffington Post column as to why he believes Ashley Judd shouldn't run for U.S. Senate:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In Hollywood, "no" is silence over time. The way you find out you're not getting the job, that they passed, that they didn't respond to the material, that they're going a different direction, is silence. It's the call you don't get. No one wants to give you bad news, because then you might associate their voice with bad news. So you don't hear anything. But I don't know Ashley Judd -- I'm just a fan -- and I can say something she doesn't want to hear.
She's not going to be the next United States Senator from Kentucky.
I think Ashley Judd is exactly the kind of person who should be in government. She's smart, she's hardworking and politically aware and involved. She cares about important issues, like the environment and health care and human rights. Poverty, working poverty, isn't an abstraction to her, like it obviously is to Paul Ryan. She's run a business. (If you don't think being an actress is a business I don't know where to start.) She's charismatic, which means once she's in office she can get people to do things, as opposed to, for example, Mitch McConnell.
But it ain't gonna happen. Not in Kentucky. Not in an election to unseat the Senate Minority Leader.
That's just silly.
Ashley Judd shouldn't take this personally. There's probably no other Democrat who could take that seat next year either. Mitt Romney won 109 counties in Kentucky in November. He tied in another seven. Obama won four. Yes, Kentucky has a Democratic governor, but he himself once lost a Senate election to Mitch McConnell.
Really? That's just silly? So Ashley Judd has not officially run and a columnist thinks it's just silly for her to consider running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky based on the history of politics of Kentucky?
Apparently Mr. Kelly hasn't seen one of the most recent polls:
Mitch McConnell Leads Ashley Judd 49-40 in New Poll
By PHILLIP M. BAILEY
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leads actress Ashley Judd by nine percentage points, according to new poll released Wednesday.
The survey was conducted by RunSwitch & Harper Polling, which was co-founded by Republican strategist Scott Jennings of Kentucky.
It has a 3.3 percent margin of error and surveyed 850 likely voters.
Besides a near 10-point lead for McConnell, the firm shows the GOP leader with 60 percent support among Republican primary voters versus "someone else."
Granted of course Ashley Judd does have the name recognition which could arguably be why she ranks high in the polls, she still... HAS... NOT... RUN... FOR.... THE... U.S.... SENATE.... YET.
Of course, you can tell Chris Kelly is getting a bit sidetracked because here he's talking about Hollywood in his first paragraph in that just those in the film industry people say "no" to someone for not hiring him/her on a film project then that means we should simply say "no" do Ashley Judd and persuade her not to challenge Mitch McConnell for re-election.
I'm not sure where Kelly is going here but the point being is that the political world and the Hollywood world are completely different professions. In the political world, voters will say no but at least if you're running for higher office like the U.S. Senate you get win the voters over in a year long vetting process and eventually make a difference in the U.S. Senate once you are elected.
Here's probably a good reason why no other Democrat could take this seat this year:
And there's no earthly reason for Mitch McConnell. But in Kentucky, except for the Rand Paul hiccup, entrenched and testudine wins the race.
(People make fun of Mitch McConnell's looks, chinless and perpetually startled, like a cross between George Will and the guy handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he got shot. But he doesn't lose elections.)
How does Chris Kelly know for sure no other Democrat aside from Ashley Judd could take this seat this year?
We've got a newsflash for him: President Obama got re-elected in November 2012 and since then, Mitch McConnell's approval ratings have gone down, down, down. The GOP continues to shoot itself in the foot in more ways than one, giving the Democratic Party and us Kossacks lots of ammunition to use against people like Mitch McConnell in their fight to secure re-election.
Kelly acts as if the elections in the past are going to be exactly the same for Democrats now as they were then. Really. He seriously believes this even though no one has run a 2014 U.S. Senate campaign yet. Apparently he believes we're still going to have Bruce Lunsford-type of candidates, right?
I don't know why Ashley Judd is even thinking about Kentucky. She lives in Nashville. I think she's getting bad advice. Here's some good advice:
Tennessee's 4th.
If Ashley Judd wants to do something for her country, and her party, and the planet, she should run for Congress in Tennessee's 4th District.
It's in a state where she actually lives.
And she could win.
Oh, for the planet. I see, if Ashley Judd wants to do something good for the planet, she should run in Tennessee's 4th Congressional District.
Well, actually, there's a good reason why Judd wants to run for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky and not in the Congressional district which Chris Kelly wants her to run in:
Chris Kelly does make a valid point though of a reason why Scott DesJarlais should be defeated for re-election and why it may tie into Ashley Judd more personally than say the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky. After all, Judd herself was raped more than once in her life.
Here's the deal: By Ashley Judd running for Congress in Tennessee's 4th Congressional District, she'll actually just be representing the district, not the entire state. Therefore, her campaign would just shape up the entire district, not the entire state.
If Judd runs in the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky, she has the potential to shake up the political landscape in a big way because the issue is bigger than lame Congressmen like Scott DesJarlais. By running for the U.S. Senate, Judd would be campaigning all across Kentucky and all over, perhaps even in conservative districts.
Judd, even while being a progressive Democrat in a state that isn't known to having progressive Democrats hold higher office, can really wake up the Kentucky Democratic Party and make it fight harder for Democrats while at the same time keeping its base. She can bring in lots of female voters to support her campaign and she'd put on one hell of a campaign because, you know, she's got it in her blood and she knows how to campaign.
And it's also important for Judd to shake up the establishment so idiots like this guy can shut their trap:
Once again though, Chris Kelly needs to do his research more. The Internet is available and Kelly can spend the time to do a bit of research by Googling stories of Ashley Judd. He might even be able to find this excellent article in the NY Times that could change his mind:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Still, many residents said Ms. Judd’s character, which they admired, was more important than her politics.
“She may be a little too liberal for me,” said Janice Taylor, a 71-year-old retiree. But neither was she a fan of Mr. McConnell’s.
“I’ve got tired of him,” she said. “He’s always against everything.”
Perry Dalton, 67, who retired from the AK Steel plant in Ashland, said he was a Republican but liked Ms. Judd because she was not a typical politician.
“I know she wants to come back to help her state, her community, just from her heart,” said Mr. Dalton, holding the hand of a granddaughter before a ride on an electric indoor train at the Town Center mall. “I know she’s more liberal than me. But honesty is more important to me than anything.”
Joan Christian, 42, a hospital technician, said she previously voted for Mr. McConnell but would not rule out Ms. Judd even because of her current residence out of state.
“I think she’s as qualified as anyone,” Ms. Christian said. “She was an educated professional woman before she was an actress.”
Nice try Chris Kelly but we're not falling for your article.
2:16 PM PT: Hi guys,
I forgot to post the website URL that cites the polling information so here it is:
http://m.wfpl.org/...