Kentucky Fried Senate Election

Is Amy McGrath the Kentucky Democrat who can beat Mitch McConnell in Kentucky's U.S. Senate election in 2020?  Or is she a female Jack Conway?

Jack Conway, of course, was the Democrats' great big hope to win a U.S. Senate seat in 2010, although he lost to Rand Paul and, after losing the 2015 gubernatorial race there, retired from politics never to make a comeback - after Chris Matthews declared that Conway had a brilliant future.  Amy McGrath is a former Marine pilot who ran for the House in 2018, just like former Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill - but, unlike Sherrill, lost her bid to become a congresswoman.  And now she thinks she can defeat Mitch McConnell?

For all of Jack Conway's misfortunes, he was lucky never to have challenged McConnell in an election, because had he done so, his political career would have been buried twelve feet under instead of merely six feet under.  McConnell is like a masterful conductor, going after his Democratic opponents with a fully symphonic attack that ensures that the last thing they hear on Election Eve is their own political death song.  After he lost two statewide elections, Conway's political career was toast.  McConnell's Democratic opponents are left with political careers that are the equivalent of a turkey that's been deep-fried too long. 

Add to McGrath's uphill battle a statewide electorate that Trump carried in 2016 by thirty points, a Kentucky congressional delegation with only one Democrat, and a tendency for "cultural" issues to come up just in time for elections in the Bluegrass State to animate the reactionary Republican base, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

Sorry, but this is an easy call - Amy McGrath will be no more successful against McConnell than she was against Andy Barr in her House race. She'll be less successful, in fact - she only lost the House race in 2018 by three points.  But then, stranger things have happened.  No one thought McConnell had a chance against incumbent Democratic Senator Walter Huddleston back in 1984.  And Huddleston, as a Democrat, was many people's favorite Republican (sort of like Joe Lieberman).