Well, it's nice that Ben Chandler finally decided to publicly endorse Bruce Lunsford for Senate.
But.... 1,000 miles away in Denver? I'm hoping Ben comes back to Kentucky after the convention and follows up on that with some appearances and campaign stops.
Hope....
Check out the whole thing at the Homophobe Farm Bureau interwebs location.
Since his first Senate race in 1984, Mitch McConnell's campaigns have consisted of one strategy: attack your opponent for every reason imaginably, and do it relentlessly. McConnell's campaigns are never about himself (what he stands for and believes in), they are about drumming up hatred of his opponents.
So when I read this at his de jure blog yesterday, I couldn't help but laugh:
House parties are usually about SUPPORTING a candidate running for office. But for Bruce Lunsford, even the house parties are negative. In an email dispatched yesterday, Lunsford says his supporters can “help defeat Mitch McConnell by hosting a house party.”
Color me shocked, but fellow Hollywood mega-star Eddie Murphy has just decided to pitch in and help Bruce Lunsford on his "How you doing?" campaign strategy, in which he asks Kentuckians how they are doing in comparison to Mitch McConnell and big oil.
I've just been leaked this rough footage that Murphy has filmed, and we'll be seeing it on the airwaves very shortly.
Ryan Alessi has a wrap up of the debate today between Mitch McConnell and Bruce Lunsford, and it sounds like Bruce got in some zingers and called Mitch a failure, while Mitch did nothing but brag about what a Washington insider he is.
As Matt Gunterman has repeatedly pointed out, this kind of strategy from McConnell is political suicide. With the country pissed at Washington, D.C. right now, all this does is (1) show how entrenched McConnell is in Washington (which fits with Lunsford's "24 years is enough" theme), and (2) shows how despite his power, he doesn't get results for Kentuckians, just his big money donors. All of those millions of $ worth of ads he aired the past 10 months bragging about what he accomplished bumped his approvals up absolutely zilch.
Keep it up Mitch. Please.
Here's the juicy stuff:
Kudos to whoever came up with that line, btw...Lunsford, in fact, used his closing remarks during a two-hour forum at the Kentucky Farm Bureau to talk directly to McConnell rather than the audience. He leveled his strongest criticism of McConnell to date.
"The last 24 years, you've had an opportunity to do some great things for this state and this country. And in my opinion, you've failed," Lunsford said. "I think you have worked with a president for the last eight years closer than anyone. I think he's failed. In my judgment he's the worst president in my lifetime."
************Lunsford used his childhood experience working on his father's tobacco farm to try to connect with the audience. At one point he mentioned how, when he was in high school, he kept a tobacco spear and a knife in the trunk of his car.
"I always got the feeling with Sen. McConnell's background that he had a briefcase in the back of his car," Lunsford said
The Hillbilly with another masterpiece
And this is EXACTLY the type of commercial that the Lunsford campaign should be running. George Bush has a 62% disapproval rating in Kentucky. He has a 67% disapproval rating in Louisville. He has a 64% disapproval rating in Northern and Central Kentucky. At the very least, an ad like this should be running non-stop in the Louisville and Lexington markets.
I'm still baffled why we're just playing defense and quote newspapers that hardly anyone really gives a shit about.
Attack him on his health care obstruction.
Attack him for his rubber-stamping of Bush's failed policies.
Attack him for his treatment of veterans.
The whole gas dialogue is a push and it is played out. Mitch McConnell wins if the status quo stays the same, so let's kick this campaign into gear, eh?
(PS- I know I'm impatient, but aren't we all right now :)
SUSA came out with a new poll on the KY Senate race between Mitch McConnell and Bruce Lunsford, and on first glance the numbers are bad. Whereas in June Lunsford was only down 50 to 46, now SUSA has him down 52-40.
Panic time? No. A look at the sample drawn by SUSA shows that in all likelihood, the numbers in this race have barely moved at all.
The June SUSA poll sample matched fairly well with Kentucky's party registration, as shown below:
......................SUSA% ...........registration in KY%
Democrats ...........57 ................................57
Republicans .........33 ...............................36
Indies ...............9 ...................................7
But check out the extremely skewed #'s in the poll they just released:
...........................SUSA% ...............registration in KY%
Democrats............... 50 ...............................57
Republicans..............39 ...............................36
Indies .....................9 .................................7
As Jake pointed out earlier today, if SUSA's sample had reflected accurate crosstabs for party affiliation, this poll would have shown almost no movement. Here are the exact #'s if the crosstabs reflected party registration:
McConnell- 49.7%
Lunsford- 43%
Certainly nothing to write home about, but it's not the dramatic 12 point defecit that SUSA shows.
Further, assuming that turnout by party remains the same as it was in last years election (and this certainly is a leap, but bear with me), it moves slightly closer (Dems 61%, Rep 35%, Ind 4%):
McConnell- 48.9%
Lunsford- 44.15%
We still remain stuck in the 4-8 point range on this race, as we have been for sometime.
A few aspects of the poll I want to mention. In the first poll, only 7% of Independents were undecided, and McConnell won big (52-42). In this poll, undecided jumped to 23%, and Mitch and Bruce were in a dead heat. I would interpret this as the back and forth TV ads on gasoline absolutely confusing the hell out of voters. They see the candidates making completely opposite claims, and they have no idea which one to believe. The problem is, even if Lunsford wins over this crowd, they have such a low turnout (only 21.6 last year) that it might not end up meaning a great deal.
Another tidbit: though %'s among conservatives and moderates remained the same, Bruce lost slight ground among liberals (he still only gets 74% of them). On the one hand, this is probably due to Bruce trying to out-drill McConnell himself on gas prices. But I have to think that a great deal of this is pent up fruatration and fallout from the Fischer attacks on Lunsford during the primary, and the lack of an effort to heal those wounds since the week after the primary. As I wrote on this earlier this week, either some folks need to stop pouting, or others need to get off their ass and reach out to the liberals who got beat in May.
My final thoughts: nothing has moved at all over the last 2 months. That is not good. When you're down, you can't afford to simply tread water, which is, quite frankly, what I've seen out of the campaign so far. Enough with the defense. It's time to attack. Open the wallet and get a giant wave of negative ads out there on health care, veterans, and his Bush-Love (P.S.- check out the crosstabs on those who say health care is the #1 issue: 57-41 Lunsford... work that thang). After this week, we only have 11 news cycles to go until the election. We need to move the media discussion along from just gas prices, because this is turning into nothing but a stalemate. If we have a stalemate between now and November, McConnell wins.
There's your amateur opinion, suckas.
Less than 3 months until the election, and Greg Fischer is still hinting that Lunsford has to do more to get him to help out, and Ben Chandler still hasn't officially endorsed him.
Either these folks need to stop pouting, or Lunsford's campaign is woefully negligent in reaching out to them.
Less than 90 days folks.
And when will those ads showing Mitch McConnell filibustering to block health care benefits for children, vets and Medicare recipients be hitting the airwaves??? It's time for some real offense.
Please don't screw up this opportunity, peeps....
So... Bruce Lunsford has basically been behind Mitch McConnell in the polls by somewhere between 12-6 points over the past 9 months. Certainly within range, but besides the post-primary bump, there hasn't been much movement at all.
So far, his campaign has basically been one of almost exclusive defense. Mitch goes on the attack on gasoline, and Lunsford plays defense. This has happened back and forth for a good month now.
Here's a suggestion: instead of exclusively playing defense on gas prices (especially since the media has backed you up against Mitch's ridiculous charges), how about you move on from that and play some offense. Start attacking Mitch on his 4 deadly sins: continually filibustering against the troops' benefits, education, and rotation; being a shill for the unjust health care industry; epitomizing the corrput pay-for-play politics of D.C.; advocating a permanent presence in Iraq and indifference to Afghanistan. There are TONS more, but those are the big ones you can hammer away at him on. (fiscal irresponsibility could be one if handled correctly, too)
We're under 100 days Bruce. It's time to start playing offense and win this thing. Otherwise your not going to put a dent in that gap.
Our favorite mildly retarded, racist, wife beating, porn star Senate candidate has just revealed himself to be even more racist and stupid than we could have ever imagined. Check out this mind-boggling appearance on an internet talk show:
And that's just scratching the surface of his stupid. Billy is running on the Libertarian ticket and DOES NOT KNOW WHAT LIBERTARIANISM IS....When asked about high energy prices, Kentucky Libertarian for U.S. Senate Sonny Landham said we should release oil from the strategic oil reserve, drill in areas of the U.S. currently off-limits, and try to persuade OPEC to cut the price of oil. And if that doesn’t work, Mr. Landham said we should use military force to steal the oil. More specifically, he said: “We should go and bomb those camel-dung shovelers back into the sand.” Apparently thinking his racial epithet clever, he reiterated: “I said ‘camel-dung shovelers.’ Make sure you put that in the newspaper.”
Later asked about this on The Weekly Filibuster, — a radio show that works to inform young voters of the week’s political news — Landham asked if Arabs would prefer to be called “camel jockeys.”
Landham further defended his racist statements: “I’m a pro-American all the way. The Arabs, the camel dung-shovelers, the camel jockeys, whichever you wanna call ‘em, are terrorists. And they are doing a terrorist act on this country with the high gas prices. They’re about to wreck this economy, not only our economy, but the world economy. Now, when you talk to people, you don’t talk in PC terms. PC does not get the attention of the people.”
When taking a call from an Arab-American woman, Landham said he didn’t care what she thought, his interest was in American citizens. The lady told him that she was an American citizen, and Landham said he didn’t believe her.
Landham said the greatest threat to America was “not being industrialized.” He said we need to get back to the days of Jimmy Hoffa and Eugene Debs. He came out strongly against international trade and in favor of complete autarky. When it was pointed out to him that Hoffa and Debs are not typically libertarian heroes, Landham said this: “These men built America because they stood up for the working man. They didn’t allow outsourcing of jobs. Eugene Debs with the wobblies shut down Seattle for a week. Jimmy Hoffa today would shut down every truck in this country until they reduced the price of gas and diesel. John L. Lewis would never have allowed this country, uh, to subvert the mining and use of coal.”
I have no clue who "Alex Isenstadt" at Politicker is, but he has an absolutely hacktacular post up right now on the McConnell/Lunsford race. Check it:
He faces an uphill battle in his challenge to McConnell, a fourth-term incumbent who is currently serving as Senate Minority Leader. A recent poll conducted after the primary showed McConnell with a 50 percent to 39 percent edge over Lunsford.
Cook Political Report has dropped the KY Senate race from "solid Republican to likely Republican.
This is a little bit like Moody's changing a bond rating.
Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report has made a slight change in his rating of Kentucky's U.S. Senate race.
The contest between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Democrat Bruce Lunsford previously was rated as "solid Republican." Now Cook has tweaked the rating to "likely Republican."
Cook points out that a recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance law means Lunsford, with a personal fortune of between $90 million and $100 million, can spend what he wants in the race. McConnell, meanwhile, can't raise contribution limits to match what Lunsford pours in.
Cook then goes on the make a couple of ridiculous statements ("He can be counted on to run a flawless campaign" and "reliable polls consistently show McConnell at above 50% (no they don't)"), but make no mistake, this election is no longer in the bag for McConnell, and everybody knows it. Consider that meme dead.
(crossposted at Ditch Mitch)
Well, McConnell is finally spending his millions on his long expected attack ads on Bruce Lunsford. And, as expected, they have no regard for the truth.
Fortunately, Ryan Alessi is there to point out the inaccuracies (lies).
By saying Lunsford wants to "pump taxpayers for even more," it leaves the impression that Lunsford supports another increase in taxes on the price of a pump. However, the ad cites a May 21 Pol Watcher's report in which Lunsford said he favored a windfall profit tax on oil companies in order to cover a gas tax holiday this summer for consumers -- a plan that became a political football during this spring's presidential primary.
Technically oil companies are tax payers but not exactly the type of taxpayer hurt by high gas prices, which is what the rest of McConnell's spot is about.
This has been McConnell's entire campaign strategy so far (gas prices), after he ditched the fabulously unsuccessful and idiotic strategy of portraying himself as the ultimate Washington insider (can't belieeeeeeve that one didn't work).
Millionaire rescuing us from the bazillionaires who've bankrupted our government and driven us into the ditch. But in all seriousness, it'll be everybody busting their ass for him on the ground that saves the day.