I really don’t have much to say about this Politico story beyond my own title, but I’ll say it anyway:
State Rep. Charles Booker has captured late momentum in the June 23 primary, fueled by prominent endorsements and Amy McGrath's stumbles.
This was the top of the website story on Politico this morning.
My first reaction before even reading it was:
Oh No! Why do Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot?
The Democrats finally have a candidate who look like she stands a pretty good chance of defeating Mitch McConnell and now in the midst of Black Lives Matter she is being challenged by a progressive black candidate in the primary.
I found the first two paragraphs of the article dispiriting:
Amy McGrath is a national Democratic icon for her bid to take out Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader and reviled figure on the left, raising tens of millions of dollars to fuel her campaign.
But McConnell isn't the opponent McGrath, a former fight pilot, is sweating most right now. Instead, it's her rival in the June 23 Democratic primary: Charles Booker, a state lawmaker who was virtually ignored for months but now has all the momentum in the closing days of the election.
The third paragraph reminded me of how the Democrats have engaged in savage internecine warfare in the past. This seems to me to be another progressive purity test where a viable candidate has lost endorsements to a more liberal one.
Booker has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kentucky’s two largest newspapers. And the recent protests over racial injustice and police misconduct in Louisville, Booker's hometown, has shined a spotlight on a candidate who otherwise might have been left in the wake of McGrath's television ad blitz.
Before this it seemed to me, and to Democratic pundits, that in former a Marine fighter pilot who was fairly moderate the Democrats finally had a candidate who would attract Kentucky independents and moderate Republicans who had soured on McConnell’s Trump sycophancy.
Now it turns out that some Kentucky Democrats seem to have forgotten that whoever wins the primary has to run against Mitch McConnell, a master politician who is the longest-serving U.S. senator for Kentucky in history, and also is the longest-serving leader of U.S. Senate Republicans in history.
Now we have two Democrats attacking each other like this:
"I don't really know what position Amy McGrath takes because she goes back and forth on everything depending on what consultants seem to say,” Booker said in an interview. “I know that Kentuckians can smell BS from miles away.”
“I’m not, as Mr. Booker claims, 'a pro-Trump Democrat.' I’m pro-Kentucky and pro-America,” McGrath said, refuting her top opponent in a POLITICO interview after months of keeping her fire trained on McConnell.
Hello!
There’s a general election to win. It seems to me that progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have conceded the election to McConnell and are endorsing Booker just to make a point and get their message out.
I don't think we serve our cause well by having a wounded Amy McGrath running against McConnell, nor do we need a Bernie Sanders/AOC Democrat trying to attract the swing voters needed to decide the election.
Currently McConnell and McGrath (+1) are in a dead heat in the June 9th FiveThirtyEight report. This is amazing considering Trump is up 17 points over Biden. Why is Booker doing this?
Saturday, Jun 13, 2020 · 5:49:56 PM +00:00
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HalBrown
From: The Democrats Have A Candidate In Kentucky. But Can She Beat Mitch McConnell? June 9th FiveThirtyEight
Is it possible (McGrath will win against McConnell)? Sure. It would take nearly everything to break McGrath’s way, though. For one, the national environment would need to be reallybeneficial for Democrats — probably even more Democratic-leaning than the 2018 cycle was. Maybe McGrath can get help from a strong Democatic presidential nominee. And it’s not like McConnell himself is invulnerable: He has a poor approval rating in his home state, despite its strong GOP lean. The most recent Morning Consult data pegged his approval rating at just 36 percent compared with 50 percent who disapprove of him, making him the most unpopular senator in the country.
But Democrats have gotten their hopes up about beating the unpopular McConnell before. In 2014, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes seemed like a promising Democratic challenger to take on McConnell, but he still easily won reelection by slightly more than 15 points. Granted, 2014 was a really good cycle for Republicans, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Bluegrass State is probably too red to elect a Democratic senator at the moment, barring some unexpected development.