KY-SEN: Amy McGrath in

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Starting to see a lot of activity regarding Mike Broihier.

Will be interesting to see how this primary plays out.

I'd have thought it was a fairly easy McGrath victory thanks to Broihier and Booker likely sharing more floating voters with each other than either does with McGrath.

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https://twitter.com/Booker4KY/status/1269102605764042754

United front with Broihier, or a Sanders/Warren endorsement?

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It seems it was either that they'd raised over $1m, or this:

https://twitter.com/Booker4KY/status/1269417587571601411

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Booker on the offensive.

Unlikely to happen, but it would honestly be hilarious to see McGrath break ActBlue records just to lose to Booker in the home stretch.

The nomination is safe McGrath as long as both Booker and Broihier remain in the race.

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https://twitter.com/phillipmbailey/status/1269792623973318656
He claims later in the thread that the rumour relates to (presumably private) polling numbers. He has also said Booker is "in mid-30s where rumors have him now." Do KY Democrats here think McGrath is a lock for the nomination?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Would Booker preform better than McGrath?

Probably not, but that would come at the expense of donations better sent elsewhere and he might do more to build party infrastructure/name ID for a future run at a less hopeless race.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I like Charles a bit, but McConnell would destroy him on supporting GND.

He'll also destroy McGrath on supporting the GND, because even if she says she doesn't, she'll have close to zero credibility with too many voters. Booker could at least conceivably have a political future in KY and could benefit from a well-run campaign.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/phillipmbailey/status/1270780829447458816

https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1270786160806244353

The Democratic nominee against McConnell will have absolutely zero trouble raising significant money, and the national Dems know that. They're wary of swapping in Booker for other reasons.

I have some ideas, but what do you think those reasons are?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Is this guy affiliated with Booker's campaign or is he just talking out of his ass?

https://twitter.com/kartpath/status/1271909153599037444

He appears to be affiliated with MVMT, one of the poll's sponsors.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

You love to see it!

https://twitter.com/RuralChrisLee/status/1273049880446095363

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imo isn't warren part of the Senate Leadership team?

Sanders also has an official role as outreach chair. Presumably these roles are causing them to withhold in winnable races, but KY is no longer one of those.

This primary is now Tilt Booker, in my opinion.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Matt Jones and Rocky Adkins should have run.

They would have had a hope (along with either of the Beshears - Schumer really should have gone full Bullock on all four of them), but probably still wouldn't have been favoured. KY might not have provided Democrats with a tragedy by avoiding their nomination and tantalisingly close defeat, but the state may yet come through with the best political comedy of 2020: a primary loss for the most well-funded congressional challenger of all time.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

It's Ryan Grim, but it's still hilarious:

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1273705908145664000

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If McGrath does lose, one question is what happens to her vast coffers.

I'd hope they would stop growing, but 2020 is so cursed that resistance boomers might still donate to her campaign to remove McConnell even after it had finished.

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https://twitter.com/HolmesJosh/status/1275574879916605441

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https://twitter.com/MichaelDuncan/status/1275593821099905025

Some cause for optimism for Booker's campaign?

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Looking forward to what will be on track to be the worst Democratic Senate campaign since Alvin Greene in 2010.

McGrath's a terrible candidate when not considering $ but the fundraising is a mitigating factor even if it hurts senate races elsewhere. I can think of worse campaigns in serious races (IA-SEN 2014, for instance).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

It's F@#$ing  Kentucky, McConnell is going win easily in November regardless but maybe McGrath can tie him down some with her money.  Long term if want to compete in states like Kentucky you need a big enough tent to fit in moderate Democrats.

Booker's tent was big enough for the endorsement of prominent Kentuckian moderate Democrats. He would also have lost the General Election, but McGrath couldn't even get them on board.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Between this and the Hickenlooper thing, words cannot describe my disgust with the DSCC right now. These people essentially bought a nomination for the most incompetent major candidate I've seen in my lifetime. There's disasters, there's Bruce Braley, and then there's whatever the **** this was. A Green New Deal isn't going to go over well in Kentucky, but cosmic-brain takes about how Mitch McConnell is Actually Not Helping Trump like McGrath would sure as hell won't either. Most importantly, Amy McGrath, and the DSCC (drunk on greed) forgot the first rule of politics: all politics is local.

I actually don't have an issue with a conservative strategy. You don't see me calling to primary Colin Peterson or Jared Golden, or backing Paula Jean Swearengin against Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin is a conservative, Trump-compromising Democrat. Normal logic would be to look at his strong grassroots presence, his long ties to the state, and his track record of winning campaigns, and to try to find a candidate with similar traits. And the sad thing is, we had one in our grasp.

Of course, this is the Democratic Party we're talking about. Democratic Party logic would be to crown a candidate the moment they announced because of how much money they raised, regardless of their ties to the state or their grassroots support. Regardless of their previous stances, they would act like a dollar store knockoff of Joe Manchin. After all, Joe Manchin is well-liked because he's a bipartisan Democrat.

The DC establishment had sent DC consultants to "power" a woman who moved from the DC metro to run for Congress's Senate run. The DC establishment, with the help low-information NPCs who Just Want To See Moscow Mitch Go Down, bought McGrath the nomination. It's especially sad for me, considering one of my political heroes is my former representative who rose to power in a similar way Booker's campaign did. It's safe to say that between Citizens United and social media giving the average American an investment in politics, the next Carol Shea-Porter couldn't rise up nowadays.

If you want to know why I don't identify strongly with the Democrats, it's things like this. I'm in a very strange place where I'm more attached to Biden himself than I am the party. You have a significant amount of the party who, for lack of a better word, thinks I should f*** off and join the Russians because I liked Bernie more than I did Hillary 4 years ago. You have an establishment that's obsessed with keeping the gravy train flowing to the point where they'll pick winners and losers, even if everything shows the "winner" as comically incompetent or is a Republican on environmental policy. You had a future progressive star in your grasp - dare I say, someone who had Presidential material written all over him - and these sons of bitches pissed it away for green pieces of paper.

Booker was an abysmal candidate in his own right; he had “random sacrificial lamb with no future” written all over him.

Booker was doomed against McConnell but his late surge means he might well have a political future as he'll become the "one who got away" to too many within the "Kentucky is a tossup, we can beat Moscow Mitch" crowd (narrowly lost primaries do less for one's fundraising future than narrowly lost GEs tend to, but they're still usually better than nothing). If he's smart and wants a political future, he'll use that energy for other offices that are winnable within this political generation (and one can never rule out KY eventually trending Dem; most current trends aren't forever): he could take up a job in the Beshear admin, run for a statewide/municipal role or go for John Yarmuth's district if/when he retires.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Between this and the Hickenlooper thing, words cannot describe my disgust with the DSCC right now. These people essentially bought a nomination for the most incompetent major candidate I've seen in my lifetime. There's disasters, there's Bruce Braley, and then there's whatever the **** this was. A Green New Deal isn't going to go over well in Kentucky, but cosmic-brain takes about how Mitch McConnell is Actually Not Helping Trump like McGrath would sure as hell won't either. Most importantly, Amy McGrath, and the DSCC (drunk on greed) forgot the first rule of politics: all politics is local.

I actually don't have an issue with a conservative strategy. You don't see me calling to primary Colin Peterson or Jared Golden, or backing Paula Jean Swearengin against Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin is a conservative, Trump-compromising Democrat. Normal logic would be to look at his strong grassroots presence, his long ties to the state, and his track record of winning campaigns, and to try to find a candidate with similar traits. And the sad thing is, we had one in our grasp.

Of course, this is the Democratic Party we're talking about. Democratic Party logic would be to crown a candidate the moment they announced because of how much money they raised, regardless of their ties to the state or their grassroots support. Regardless of their previous stances, they would act like a dollar store knockoff of Joe Manchin. After all, Joe Manchin is well-liked because he's a bipartisan Democrat.

The DC establishment had sent DC consultants to "power" a woman who moved from the DC metro to run for Congress's Senate run. The DC establishment, with the help low-information NPCs who Just Want To See Moscow Mitch Go Down, bought McGrath the nomination. It's especially sad for me, considering one of my political heroes is my former representative who rose to power in a similar way Booker's campaign did. It's safe to say that between Citizens United and social media giving the average American an investment in politics, the next Carol Shea-Porter couldn't rise up nowadays.

If you want to know why I don't identify strongly with the Democrats, it's things like this. I'm in a very strange place where I'm more attached to Biden himself than I am the party. You have a significant amount of the party who, for lack of a better word, thinks I should f*** off and join the Russians because I liked Bernie more than I did Hillary 4 years ago. You have an establishment that's obsessed with keeping the gravy train flowing to the point where they'll pick winners and losers, even if everything shows the "winner" as comically incompetent or is a Republican on environmental policy. You had a future progressive star in your grasp - dare I say, someone who had Presidential material written all over him - and these sons of bitches pissed it away for green pieces of paper.

Booker was an abysmal candidate in his own right; he had “random sacrificial lamb with no future” written all over him.

Booker was doomed against McConnell but his late surge means he might well have a political future as he'll become the "one who got away" to too many within the "Kentucky is a tossup, we can beat Moscow Mitch" crowd (narrowly lost primaries do less for one's fundraising future than narrowly lost GEs tend to, but they're still usually better than nothing). If he's smart and wants a political future, he'll use that energy for other offices that are winnable within this political generation (and one can never rule out KY eventually trending Dem; most current trends aren't forever): he could take up a job in the Beshear admin, run for a statewide/municipal role or go for John Yarmuth's district if/when he retires.

He'd lose by 20-30% in almost any statewide race.

 I agree he'd be doomed lose in the context of a federal, statewide race. For, say, state treasurer? It'd be another matter.

  The "KY is a tossup, we can beat Moscow Mitch" crowd are McGrath's fundraising base and most of them aren't even from Kentucky.  Booker is not some sort of dynamic rising star who happened to get screwed over for reasons that weren't even his fault.*  If anything, someone foolish enough to believe KY isn't titanium Safe R will probably be foolish enough to believe Booker's primary campaign somehow cost McGrath the election

The absentee voting that occurred at a much higher rate than normal because of coronavirus was probably what cooked his bid for the nomination. Regardless, whether or not he was screwed over by outside events isn't the point; what matters is that when a prominent candidate loses a primary and the winner of that primary goes on to lose the general election, a lot of voters are primed to think 'But what if we nominated Y instead?' and that boosts Y's chances in future races. It's no accident that the frontrunners in the 2020 presidential primaries were the runner-up of 2016 and the one whose entry into the 2016 contest was heavily speculated on but ultimately never realised.

Until 1-2 weeks before the primary, Booker was a random backbencher AA State Rep. whom no one saw as anything more than a borderline some-dude level D-list also-ran.  For some inexplicable reason, the Berniecrats randomly started obsessing over this meaningless primary** and inexplicably decided that random backbencher State Rep. #408,938,098,255 is a political wunderkind with future President written all over him...you know, after he loses to McConnell by 35%. 

It (sort of) worked for O'Rourke for a little while. I don't see him becoming instant presidential candidate material after just being a state rep, but a well-run race would have set him up nicely for future bids.

Now what Booker could do is try to take a greater leadership role in the legislature's Democratic minority.

Agreed that this is one of his most viable options. He'd need to run for his old seat (presumably still occupied) or carpetbag, though.

I'd have voted for him if I lived in KY, no question.  You make a good point about Booker running to replace Yarmuth whenever the latter retires (which could be during the next decade), although I maintain Booker is pretty overhyped. In any case, my issue is more with folks who act like he's the greatest thing since sliced bread and focused on this instead of the CO Senate primary (b/c Prickenlooper is the worst).

I 100% agree that CO-SEN was a recruitment failure for the left.

*I know you're not gonna like this, but whatever you think of Buttigeig, he's the only candidate this cycle whom one could really argue was an example of a rising star getting taken down by stuff that largely wasn't their fault.  Obviously, he's not a Berniecrat, but that's beside the point.

I think you can argue that for a lot of candidates, including most of the presidential field that simply failed to get media exposure because they weren't sitting US Senators/Governors of especially large states.

**I mean, even if he won the primary, are you really telling me you think defeating Amy McGrath in a primary no one except the Berniecrats cares about is a symbolic victory?  I mean, you can declare victory and leave, but it'd be like me saying Steny Hoyer winning renomination was a crushing blow from which Berniecrats may never fully recover.  You call a horse a lobster until you're blue in the face, but it's still a horse.

I'm saying that if he'd won the primary, he'd have even more name ID in 2022 than he's going to have a result of his failed primary bid. Look, for instance, at Jon Ossoff - the splash he made in 2017 gave him a support and fundraising network which propelled him to the front of the GA-SEN pack even though he wasn't too great a candidate and eventually won him the nomination. Alternatively, look at McGrath herself - if Jim Grey had beaten her in the KY-06 primary, would she really have gotten so far in the Senate race?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

* I would argue that was due to factors outside his own control (mainly the state that he lived in). I'm not gonna sit here and argue that he'd make it close. That'd be absurd. What I will argue is him outperforming McGrath. I think you'll see some sort of run for statewide office in 2023.

* Again, I'm not the type of guy to deny reality. Buttigieg couldn't get ahead with black voters primarily because their minds were already made up. I'm not convinced his sexuality was as relevant as Biden having the hearts and minds of older black Americans.

* Buttigieg was a mayor of a college town in Indiana. Sure, he had a bit of a national profile there, but the guy certainly wasn't a paragon of experience. I actually think experience isn't very relevant, given the rise of said college town mayor. Personality and campaign structure are more important, and Buttigieg and Booker had both.

* Defeating Amy is a victory. Sure, some of the Resistance NPCs will donate money to Harrison instead, but some of that money goes to the viable Democratic challengers (mainly Gideon).

And Harrison has been considerate enough to set up a joint fundraising committee with Cal Cunningham.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Data Progress put out a poll today showing McGrath trailing McConnell by 19 points, 52-33%. It is very possible that she may do worse than Jim Gray did in 2016 against Rand Paul, when he got 43%. I don't think McGrath will sink to Hillary Clinton's lows, but a McConnell victory of say, 60-36% or something along those lines wouldn't surprise me at this juncture. I'm pretty certain, given last year's results, that McGrath will still carry Elliott County, in addition to the three (Jefferson, Fayette, Franklin) that will be carried by Biden.

Is that a new poll or a repost of this June 13-15 survey commissioned by them and conducted by Civiqs? http://filesforprogress.org/datasets/2020/6/ky/Civiqs_DataforProgress_KY_banner_book_2020_06.pdf

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

So are we gonna do the thing where we pretend that a progressive is somehow more electable than a centrist in a red state?

The one poll we have for both candidates suggests Booker is substantially more electable, by which I mean his defeat is stilll inevitable but the margin is smaller.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

McGrath sucks and will lose, what else is new. Hopefully she retires with her bags of taxpayer pension money after this election. Maybe Kentuckyites will do the smart thing next time and nominate Booker who would have won in a normal year.

Probably not this year. He'd have done better than McGrift, but he doesn't have much of a record outside of Louisville and a KY Democrat who intends to win at the federal level needs to have an insane level of credibility with rural voters (not that a Louisville politician can't, but that usually means winning statewide first so that it's harder for McConnell to define one's candidacy). It includes not really being in favour of much gun control these days but Booker supported measures which would have driven too many of these single-issue voters away.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

MS is safe R, but the McGrath bucks might have changed that (and a whole host of other downballot races).

https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1307188891829645313