On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked his newly announced opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes with the most bizarre YouTube video ever released by a sitting U.S. senator. And now comes day two of what McConnell calls a "respectful exchange of ideas" with Grimes:
If you don't want to spend two minutes watching that video, I don't blame you, but it's hilarious—and not in the way McConnell intended. The basic premise of the video is that Grimes wasn't smooth or polished when she announced her candidacy because she didn't have a checklist, and as a result she (1) didn't start on time, (2) didn't have a campaign banner, signs, or a crowd of supporters, (3) didn't have a website, (4) didn't have a stump speech, and (5) didn't even have air conditioning in the room.
The thing is, nobody—at least nobody outside McConnell's campaign—thinks any of that is a reason to vote against Grimes or for McConnell. It's July 2013—the election isn't until November 2014. Unlike McConnell, Grimes hasn't been running for the Senate since 1984. In fact, she was five years old when McConnell first got elected, and that says more about how long McConnell's been in office than it does about whether or not she should already have a campaign website.
What McConnell's video really shows is that despite his three decades in office, he doesn't think he can win on the merits. He doesn't even have a substantive argument to make against Grimes, let alone her ideas. The best he can do is mock her for holding a press conference without air conditioning. But to be fair, you can understand why that might upset him: Nobody wants to see a grown turtle sweat.