First, take a look at county-by-county uninsurance rates in Kentucky before Kynect, its implementation of Obamacare:
Now take a look after Obamacare:
And finally check out these numbers from CNN's new poll of Kentucky's U.S. Senate race:
Notice how McConnell's lead comes from eastern and western Kentucky and yet eastern and western Kentucky have seen a bigger drop in uninsurance rates from Obamacare and Kynect than the other parts of the state? Now, it's easy to laugh at the people who are benefiting the most from Obamacare for being willing to vote for McConnell as though they were fools because it's obvious to us that McConnell wants to repeal their health care—but don't forget that McConnell is trying to sell them a different story, telling them that even though he wants to repeal Obamacare, he'd
leave Kynect intact.
That's a lie, but Grimes, with the exception of a couple of statements here and there, has completely and utterly failed to hold McConnell accountable for it. Apparently she's afraid of being associated with Barack Obama, which makes it seem like she thinks the people of eastern and western Kentucky are too stupid to realize that even if they hate Obama, repealing Obamacare and Kynect would hurt them.
Maybe that's true, but if so, she's never going to win anyway. So instead of trying to pull a Kentucky two-step, she should hit the issue head on, and make it the centerpiece of the campaign: If you want to keep your health insurance, she should say, vote for me. If you want to repeal it, and go back to the way things were, vote for Mitch McConnell. That message not only has the virtue of being true, it can also work. And based on the way things are trending, it's the only way she is going to win this campaign.
If she wants to win, running on Obamacare and Kynect is the way to do it.
