GOP Doom

Wow. Rasmussen has Mitch McConnell losing in Kentucky. Of course, Barack Obama's horribly unpopular there meaning that "[w]hile McConnell will try to make Obama a part of Lunsford’s name, Lunsford will emphasize McConnell’s ties to the current President." You kind of figure that McConnell will probably pull this one out, but it's a real sign of how desperate the Republican situation is.

Meanwhile, in an interesting way Kentucky Democrats will probably be better off if Obama doesn't do too well in the presidential campaign. If he opens up a clear lead over John McCain, I think the argument that Kentucky should send a Republican to help obstruct the Obama agenda could be fairly persuasive but if the race is close then people will just focus on McConnell versus Lumsford and it seems like Lumsford has a real shot.

Comments

"Meanwhile, in an interesting way Kentucky Democrats will probably be better off if Obama doesn't do too well in the presidential campaign. If he opens up a clear lead over John McCain, I think the argument that Kentucky should send a Republican to help obstruct the Obama agenda could be fairly persuasive but if the race is close then people will just focus on McConnell versus Lumsford and it seems like Lumsford has a real shot."

You and your D.C. cohorts talk about this kind of thing. Rabid followers of politics on both sides talk about this kind of thing.

To 99% of people, this logic is alien. This factor will matter not at all.

Posted by drinkof | May 27, 2008 10:41 AM

We just got done with a primary here in Kentucky last week, where Lunsford got a lot of publicity and both he and his main rival were Mitch-slapping McConnell pretty good in their ads. Meanwhile, McConnell had only token opposition and was running feel-good ads.

I recall seeing a similar bounce in Texas in John Cornyn's senate win; the Democratic nominee, Ron Kirk had a lead right after the primary, since he had the publicity in a contested primary and Cornyn had little coverage in an uncontested primary. Once the attention was equal, Texas reverted to red-state form.

Lunsford might win this, but I think a six point lead is a post-primary outlier and that McConnell still has the edge; note that the markets still had McConnell a 70% favorite.

Posted by Mark Byron | May 27, 2008 10:44 AM

As clear a case of getting a certain sort of people to vote directly against their own interests as one could hope to find.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 27, 2008 10:44 AM

drinkof:

I don't know how that logic might play out in a Kentucky senate race, but it's been a pretty effective argument for Republican candidates for governor here in Massachusetts for a very long time.

Posted by mark f | May 27, 2008 10:48 AM

a) Drinkof is right, people don't really vote strategically in that way.

b) Mark Byron - I don't think that anybody is suggesting that McConnell is now the underdog. But it is surely worrying to the GOP.

Posted by John | May 27, 2008 10:50 AM

drinkof is right, of course--most voters don't think like that.

But even if voters did think like that, I think it is becoming a legitimate question whether there will be enough hardcore Republicans left to actually obstruct President Obama, meaning he may well end up with a working coalition in each house of Congress. And in that case, the more strategic thing to do for a given state may be to try to get someone who will be able to represent that state's interests within Obama's working coalition.

Posted by DTM | May 27, 2008 10:50 AM

"Meanwhile, in an interesting way Kentucky Democrats will probably be better off if Obama doesn't do too well in the presidential campaign. If he opens up a clear lead over John McCain, I think the argument that Kentucky should send a Republican to help obstruct the Obama agenda could be fairly persuasive but if the race is close then people will just focus on McConnell versus Lumsford and it seems like Lumsford has a real shot."

You and your D.C. cohorts talk about this kind of thing. Rabid followers of politics on both sides talk about this kind of thing.

To 99% of people, this logic is alien. This factor will matter not at all.

Posted by drinkof | May 27, 2008 10:51 AM

If he opens up a clear lead over John McCain, I think the argument that Kentucky should send a Republican to help obstruct the Obama agenda

OTOH, you were sure the Republicans would pull out the last special election, so....

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 27, 2008 10:59 AM

This is what a landslide looks like in May. The Republican party's geographic (as opposed to ideologic) base is about to get whittled down to the old Confederacy, and Utah. (You forgot Poland, er,,, Wyoming.)

Optimism aside, there are still 5 months.

And all the time people spend thinking about polls in May is counter-intuitive: Campaigns matter. And despite all the talk, the 2008 campaign hasn't really begun, yet.

Posted by PDX Pete | May 27, 2008 11:00 AM

"I don't know how that logic might play out in a Kentucky senate race, but it's been a pretty effective argument for Republican candidates for governor here in Massachusetts for a very long time.

Posted by mark f | May 27, 2008 10:48 AM"

As a fellow Masshole, we should also remember that Weld and Celucci were alright guys who are on the far left of the GOP today (nevermind Romney, who won just because people were voting against whats-her-name and Swift, who nobody actually voted for). In addition, a Massachusetts voter voting for governor helps to win that seat for the entire state, but the US Senate is divided into 100 seats. People tend to want to have a Congress of the opposite party of the President to cut down on spending and force compromise, but they also want all the other states to vote differently while they get to vote for their preferred candidate. In actual voting, this means that normal voters in Senate races choose who they like more or which party they simply like more and expect other states to vote differently for them.

Posted by Reality Man | May 27, 2008 11:05 AM

True, people don't vote so strategically, but there's something to this. Across the South, where people have long voted Dem on the state level and GOP on the national, Dems running statewide during presidential election years tend to get swamped. I was living in NC in 2004, and it seemed clear that Edwards would've lost big had he run for reelection to the Senate (something Lieberman did as the VP nominee in 2000). I expect that when Ky turns out en mass to vote against Obama, enough will vote for McConnell to give him the win. He's one candidate who should benefit from linking his opponent to Obama.

Posted by NHCt | May 27, 2008 11:07 AM

Lunsford may be ahead now, but after the GOP run some race baiting ads (i.e., showing a picture of Lunsford with a picture of Obama with an afro beside him) and McConnell will pull it out.

Posted by Bernie | May 27, 2008 11:27 AM

Mark Byron:
How much do you lay on Hillary and Rudy last year at Intrade? Feels great now, doesn't it?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | May 27, 2008 11:31 AM

"I was living in NC in 2004, and it seemed clear that Edwards would've lost big had he run for reelection to the Senate (something Lieberman did as the VP nominee in 2000)."

I don't think there's any chance he would have lost big, and there's a decent chance he would have won. He clearly would have started with a bit of a deficit, but game matters. Richard Burr is a stone-cold stiff; his 2004 opponent, Erskine Bowles is an intelligent and accomplished person, but a simply awful campaigner and they ran a pathetic campaign, and yet he wasn't swamped.

Edwards would have pressed Burr on many fronts, would have run circles around him in debates, and wouldn't have been outspent. I actually think Edwards would have taken it.

Posted by drinkof | May 27, 2008 11:37 AM

As a KY resident & native, I can assure you that we will choose the worst, most corrupt candidate, which is probably McConnell, barely. He will win in a landslide.

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Posted by dee559h | May 27, 2008 12:10 PM

As a KY resident & native, I can assure you that we will choose the worst, most corrupt candidate, which is probably McConnell, BARELY.

Also a KY resident and native and I just wanted to emphasize what a horrendous candidate and, as far as I can tell, person Bruce Lunsford actually is.

He's not as bad as Mitch, but it really is by the barest of margins that he comes out looking superior.

Posted by keatssycamore | May 27, 2008 12:32 PM

One of my regrets about moving out of Kentucky is that I don't get to vote against Mitch this time around.

Still, he will win in Nov. Lunsford can't beat him. Nobody can run a dirty campaign quite like Mitch McConnell.

Posted by Eric B | May 27, 2008 12:44 PM

But even if voters did think like that, I think it is becoming a legitimate question whether there will be enough hardcore Republicans left to actually obstruct President Obama, meaning he may well end up with a working coalition in each house of Congress.

Based upon my conversations with Republicans ( and I am talking Ivy League, Country Club Republicans ), there is no such thing as a non-hardcore Republican.

With them, it is literally a question of lung capacity and of decibels. They think that they are being very funny when acting out.

They want a big military and analogous things like prisons and they want no estate or capital gains taxes.

And that's all folks.

Posted by Heflump | May 27, 2008 12:53 PM

"Still, he will win in Nov. Lunsford can't beat him. Nobody can run a dirty campaign quite like Mitch McConnell.

Posted by Eric B | May 27, 2008 12:44 PM"

That means there's only one person the Dems should run against McConnell in 2014: Pigpen. Pigpen For Senate: Dirt You Can Believe In.

Posted by Reality Man | May 27, 2008 1:26 PM

You can look at Kentucky as just another Senate seat, or you can look at it as the Senate Minority Leader's seat. In Oregon in 2006, one reason the Dems took control of the state house was because the Republican leader was challenged and spent more of her energy fighting that election than helping all of the other Republicans. Politicians are selfish, so if there are real challenges to Republican leaders' seats, that distraction will do a lot to disrupt their ability to organize effectively.

Posted by Tim | May 27, 2008 1:26 PM

I'm not sure if people in general are persuaded by this sort of argument (block Obama's agenda), but the people of Kentucky probably won't--they're not voting against Obama because of his "agenda"; they're voting against him because he is black. Sending a Republican to Washington won't make Obama white.

Posted by Urkel | May 27, 2008 1:40 PM

It won't be consciously strategic voting - it will be split ticket voting. The voters don't like Bush and the Republicans, but they also aren't going to vote for Obama. And McCain is a "likeable" Republican.

So they vote McCain to avoid voting for the black guy, and then vote for Lunsford because they have to find some other way to vote against the Republican party.

Posted by Greg Abbott | May 27, 2008 2:58 PM

Lunsford would only vote with the D caucus part of the time, but it would still be more than McConnell does. He's no prize, but maybe he'll run a good campaign. I think this is the first time he's gotten past the primary.

Posted by American Citizen | May 27, 2008 3:55 PM

The non-rapture

I'm not clear on why so many seem so ready to poor-mouth and lowball Democratic expectations, when poll after poll shows Dems doing very well.

Yes, there is such a phenomenon as a post-primary bounce, but it gives its biggest swings against non-incumbents (as Cornyn was when he ran against Kirk) because a big component of it is a temporary name-recognition advantage. Sorry, but McConnell has absolutely no name-recognition deficit to make up.

And yes, things could change between now and Election Day. But I think that we already have plenty enough evidence, from polls and special elections, to reset the conventional wisdom meter from a knee-jerk "surely the Republicans will find a way to recover in this very red state", to "they better find some big game-changer before 11/4/08 or they will lose big in this formerly red state", as well as in the rest of the nation.

But I guess some folks aren't going to believe it until they wake up 11/5/08 to the news that McConnell and hundreds of his colleagues have boarded planes for countries that don't have extradition with the US. They'll be gittin' while the gittin's good and a Republican still controls the prosecutors, and you folks will still be speculating on who's going to be in McCain's cabinet.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | May 27, 2008 5:53 PM

Heflump,

To clarify, I was referring to Republican members of Congress. And I suspect a few such people will start playing ball a lot more often once their obstructionist colleagues are no longer backed up by the veto. Not a majority of Republicans, of course, but enough to give Obama working coalitions.

Posted by DTM | May 27, 2008 11:57 PM

The first McConnell ad I saw emphasized that he'd had polio as a child. He went for the pity vote. Mitch McConnell as spunky Pollyanna with sausage curls and a lisp.

-I'll walk again, Mumsy. Just you wait and see. Now, let's pray for Daddy in heaven.
-Daddy's at the office, Mitchums.

Personally, I think he's played out. Lunsford's the candidate largely because he's rich, bought the nomination, and is a purely generic candidate. (He makes generic speeches, runs generic ads, makes generic gaffes, etc.) McConnell's got to run against someone who's just as vacant as he is.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 28, 2008 9:59 AM