Ick, I hate that folsky BS.
She related to this guy from the classic Simpson's episode?
I'm skeptical for the reasons you mentioned but I can't help but worry with him trailing her in a poll, I didn't think Heidi Heidcamp would win (or rather get close enough for Indian reservation fraud to put her over the top) either. No one seems to like McConnell. I would assume his favorability is low.
Jim Bunning almost lost as Bush was winning the state by 20 points.s episode?
I don’t like the polling either, same with Georgia.
Remember, at one point leading up to 2012, we were set to win the senate in a landslide. Bill Nelson was down in Florida, Heitkamp was down in North Dakota, Tester was down in Montana, McCaskill was waaaay down in Missouri. Unfortunately a combination of candidate implosions and the rat presidential ticket lifted all of those boats the closer we got to election day. They rose along with Obama’s approval ratings (which promptly deflated after the election).
We actually lost 2 seats, Indiana and Massachusetts.
Now, we won’t be dealing with Obama on the ticket this time. In fact, my prediction is that he’ll stay out of the limelight because Obamacare is going to be causing job losses, and Democrats won’t want him there. However, we still have to be very focused and not let our guard down. The ground operation has to be effective 100%. We have three incumbents to pick off, and that is tough, almost without precedent as far as I can tell.
I called her Grimey precisely because of the Simpsons episode. If you recall, Homer’s co-worker hated how Homer called him Grimey, but after he died, in the eulogy, Reverend Lovejoy said his full name but added “or Grimey, as he preferred to be called.” I have to assume tbat the RAT Grimes is not called Grimey by her friends and family, and certainly doesn’t prefer to be called that, but I’m going to call her Grimey and insist that she prefers to be called that from now to next November.
As for taking McConnell’s underperformance in 2008 as evidence of him going down in 2014, I vehemently disagree. KY votes a lot more Republican for president than for other offices, mostly due to national Democrats being much more liberal than those from KY (or at least than how KY Dems project themselves), which is why it is incorrect to point to 2004 and 2008 as “good GOP years in KY”—they were good for the GOP presidential candidate, but not necessarily for other Republicans. The liberalism of Kerry and Obama made them unpopular among Kentuckians, but it didn’t filter down to other offices.
But I think that a change took place in 2012. About the same percentage of Kentuckians voted against Obama as 4 years prior, but the percentage of ticket-splitting fell off dramatically. Incumbent congressmen Yarmuth and Chandler each ran ahead of Obama, but only 4.5% ahead, which in Chandler’s case meant that he got under 47% of the vote and got tossed from office by Republican Andy Barr in a district with Dem-trending Lexington, Democrat Frankfort and several historically Democrat coal counties. Chandler had outperformed the Dem presidential nominee by 15-20% in 2004 and 2008, and managed to get 50% and eke out reelection in 2010 against Barr (when Obama’s popularity was just about at its nadir), but in 2012 he saw 10-15% of the KY-06’s voters swing from McCain/Chandler to Romney/Barr.
McConnell has always been elected by rather narrow margins, and I don’t expect 2014 to be any different. This time he’s facing a fairly popular, attractive Democrat in Grimey (as she prefers to be called), and has a larger percentage than usual of Republicans pissed off at him, but he has the advantage of KY finally becoming a bona fide Republican state in federal (not just presidential) elections, and an electorate that won’t want the RATs to retain control of the Senate, particularly when one of their own stands to be Majority Leader with all that entails for the state. I think that McConnell will win with 53-54%: your typical McConnell win.