KyKurmudgeon

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Leftovers from a transformational national election that bypassed Kentucky:

After Bruce Lunsford gave Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a scare in the closing days of the fall campaign, some Democrats may be playing the “what if” game.

As in: What if U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler or state Auditor Crit Luallen had been the party’s candidate instead of the baggage-laden multimillionaire Louisville businessman?

But Democrats who let their minds wander in that direction ignore several important points.

At the time Chandler and Luallen opted out of the race last year, McConnell appeared farstronger than the vulnerable incumbent he became down the stretch.

And even though both Chandler and Luallen could have expected considerable help from national Democrats, it’s questionable they could have raised the kind of money Lunsford pulled out of his pockets and invested in his own campaign. It was that investment up front that put Lunsford in position to be competitive when the collapse of the financial markets put McConnell at greatest risk.

Of course, if this year’s events could have been foreseen, national Democratic organizations likely would have made sure either Chandler or Luallen had the kind of big bucks Lunsford spent on his own.

And under those circumstances, either of the two would have had a better shot at taking McConnell down because each feels far more love from the Democratic base than Lunsford does.

But absent that foresight, Chandler or Luallen might not have been able to make the kind of up-front investment necessary to be in position to take advantage when McConnell became vulnerable.

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All of that said, if Lunsford had won, it would have been in spite of the campaign he ran rather than because of it.

From the outset, his was a campaign of blown opportunities, starting with his failure to make Issue No. 1 of his pitch to the public McConnell’s joined-at-the-hip relationship with the most unpopular American president in the history of polling.

Lunsford should have pounded that issue on the stump and in his ads every day from Day One. He didn’t do a good job of that.

Then, when the financial markets tanked, McConnell’s vote for a $700 million bailout should have become Issue No. 2, again pounded into the public’s consciousness on a daily basis.

Even McConnell acknowledged, in a post-election media conference call, “It was the biggest issue in the country, but it was not the biggest issue in (Kentucky) people making up their minds.”

Of course, it wasn’t — because Lunsford never exploited it. Instead, he hemmed and hawed for weeks before taking a semi-firm position on the bailout.

Finally, when McConnell’s buddy Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted on seven felony counts, Issue No. 3  pounded on a daily basis should have been the numerous summer vacations McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao spent visiting Stevens in Alaska.

Lunsford’s response consisted of about three e-mail statements to the media. If a single ad aired on the McConnell-Stevens connection, I didn’t see it.

Three easily exploitable issues became three big-time blown opportunities.

In a wrap-up of Sen. Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign, Sharon Cohen of the Associated Press described the scene in the middle of the September financial collapse when Obama staffers heard Sen. John McCain utter words he must certainly now regret: “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

Campaign manager David Plouffe and communications director Dan Pfeiffer knew immediately what they had, and the ad folks were at work within an hour on a spot that aired the next day depicting McCain as out of touch.

That’s the difference between winning campaigns and losing ones. Winners have instant “Aha!” moments. Losers never have them at all.

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One of the bigger losers in Tuesday’s election wasn’t even on the ballot.

Kentucky Democrats underperformed at all levels, while the state’s Republicans defended well in a year when their national counterparts were taking their lumps. Nowhere was that more evident than in state legislative races.

In the federal races, a Democratic win would have been considered an upset. But the Democrats expected to pick up one Senate seat and had an outside chance at another. And they expected to add a handful of seats to their House majority.

Instead, the Senate numbers didn’t change at all. And House Democrats had a net pickup of one.

Since Gov. Steve Beshear’s party was unable to budge the numbers at all in an uncooperative Republican-controlled Senate, he has to be considered one of Tuesday’s losers.

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Carroll Hubbard, the former U.S. representative who was convicted on several felony counts and sentenced to three years in prison in the 1990s, needs to give up his quest for political redemption. It ain’t gonna happen.

Exit polls showed a substantial majority of voters thought Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is unqualified to be president, while a larger majority felt Sen. Joe Biden is qualified. Instead of helping Sen. John McCain, she proved to be a drag on his campaign. He made a rash choice in the selection of his running mate, and it cost him.

This public recognition that Palin isn’t up to the nation’s top job should give pause to those Republicans who have begun suffering from the delusion that she is the future of their party.

A majority of Americans voted for change Tuesday, but not a majority of Kentuckians. Voters in Kentucky voted for more of the same. They voted more of the same in the presidential race by backing John McCain. They voted for more of the same in the U.S. House and Senate, and more of the same in the state House and Senate. Sure, a couple of state House seats flipped parties and the Democrats added one vote to its majority. But that still amounts to more of the same.

As a result, Kentuckians will get more of the same from the folks they sent to Washington and Frankfort. In Washington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ability to obstruct progress may be tempered a bit by increased Democratic majority. But the lack of change in Frankfort suggests continued dysfunction in the General Assembly. Who can be happy about that?

After taking Wednesday morning to go over the results of the election and try to figure out what those results mean, I’ll be posting some thoughts on the outcome between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m Wednesday. I’ll also be monitoring any comments that come in and responding to those comments. If you have a chance to visit the KyKurmudgeon blog during that period, please share your thoughts as well.

If you have voted already, I applaud you. If you haven’t voted already, stop reading blogs and go take advantage of the great privilege you have as an American. Help choose your next president, your U.S. senator, your U.S. representative, your state House and Senate members, your judges and other local officials. The blogs will be here when you return. For now, though, GO VOTE!!!!

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Lately, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s main argument for re-election to a fifth term has gone something like this:

“I have seniority. As minority floor leader, I have a place at the table when the decisions are made and the clout to bring home the bacon. Don’t trade all of that away for a rookie.”

OK, McConnell would never utter “minority” in front of “floor leader.” That would remind him he didn’t achieve his dream (and maybe never will) of becoming “majority” floor leader. But the rest of those words represent his basic pitch to Kentucky voters in recent weeks.

However, even if he survives Democrat Bruce Lunsford’s challenge Tuesday, McConnell may well find his clout has been greatly diminished when he returns to Washington in January. And his presence at the table, if he still has a place there, could be ignored when the serious discussions occur.

This election shapes up as a real downer for Republicans. Even before Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens got convicted on seven felony counts, Democrats were talking about winning a filibuster- and veto-proof majority in the Senate. The conviction of Stevens, a good buddy of McConnell’s, improves that possibility.

Republican prospects look so grim the party’s national committee recently secured a $5 million line of credit to help several embattled Republican incumbents, including McConnell.

If the Democrats succeed in attaining 60 votes (with the help of a couple of independents),  McConnell’s relevance takes a huge hit. Even if the Democrats (aided by those independents) get a majority in the high 50s, they may be able to get most anything they want done by picking up a vote or two from moderate Republicans.

Despite his seniority and his position of leadership, McConnell might not fare as well as a rookie would under these two scenarios, particularly a rookie who helps put the Democrats in that position.

Exhibits A and B for that argument are U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and John Yarmuth, who both had more influence with their party leaders than normal for freshmen because they flipped Republican seats and helped retake the House for Democrats.

If Lunsford succeeds in doing a Tom Daschle number on McConnell, he can expect Democratic Senate leaders to greet his arrival in Washington like the return of the prodigal son.

McConnell’s argument also rests on the assumption that his fellow Republicans retain him as their leader. But it was on his watch that  Republican fortunes declined so much that he and several of his colleagues are now at risk.

When the head lemming takes the pack over the cliff and into the rough seas Republican senators expect to experience Tuesday, some of the survivors might start thinking about new leadership — understandably so.

Should that happen, McConnell would become one of the more irrelevant members of Congress, a rejected former leader sent to the back benches by members of his own minority party.

Senority? Minority leadership status that earns him a place at the table? Clout to bring home the bacon?

Desperate arguments by an incumbent whose 24 years in Washington have been totally devoted to the accumulation of personal power and who now faces the prospect of seeing some or all of that power slip away even if he wins on Tuesday.

To see a portion of the speech Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave in praise of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has now been convicted on seven felony counts, click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjA_4Pdi5Bk

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — This and that while wondering whether Nov. 4 will produce a transformational election:

On a national level, the election of America’s first president of color would be transformational in and of itself.

But the significance of such an election outcome would be enhanced if it marked a long-term change of course for the nation. In that event, it might one day be looked back upon as the end of the Ronald Reagan era in American politics.

At the very least, it might be seen as the point at which the nation turned away from the fiscally foolish neo-con agenda of tax cuts for the rich, massive deficit spending and deregulation of everything in the marketplace.

On the state level, the election could transform the political landscape if it marks the end of the Mitch McConnell era.

After watching him rise to the level of dominating Kentucky politics and maintain that dominance for so long, it’s difficult to imagine him losing to anyone, much less a candidate with Louisville businessman Bruce Lunsford’s baggage. But all the recent independent polls suggest it is a very real possibility.

Those polls contain some troubling signs for McConnell.

For instance, the Herald-Leader/WKYT Kentucky Poll gave McConnell a lead of just four points, 47 percent to Lunsford’s 43 percent. But the same poll gave Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, a 16-point lead over Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. No doubt, the color of Obama’s skin is a factor in McCain’s lead.

But whatever accounts for the wide margin in the race at the top of the ticket, these disparate findings suggest that Kentucky voters may be willing to  hold McConnell accountable for enabling the Bush administration in all its missteps, including the misguided war in Iraq, while giving a pass to the presidential candidate who would continue President Bush’s failed policies.

McConnell also can find cause for concern in the poll results from Western Kentucky.

In recent elections, that has been a fertile region for Republicans. In 2004, for instance, then-state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo built a lead over U.S. Jim Bunning  in early returns from the eastern part of the state only to see it evaporate as the votes in Western Kentucky were counted.

In the Herald-Leader/WKYT survey, McConnell led Lunsford by just six points, 48 percent to 42 percent, in the 1st Congressional District. That’s statistically within the margin of error.

So, if Lunsford were to emulate Mongiardo in building an early lead, McConnell may have more trouble than Bunning did in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in Western Kentucky.

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At the urging of the Bush administration, Congress recently voted to nationalize the nation’s financial markets.

OK, that’s an overstatement. But it’s overstated to stress a point, that point being that McCain voted (as did Obama) for the biggest example of government socialism this nation has ever seen — and, it is to be hoped, ever will see.

Yet McCain has the gall to point a finger at Obama and accuse him of being a “socialist” who wants to use taxes to redistribute wealth.

First, all tax policies redistribute wealth one way or the other. McCain just favors a tax policy that redistributes it up the income ladder rather than down.

Second, after being complicit in redistributing more than $1 trillion of this nation’s wealth to Wall Street, McCain needs to look in the mirror, say hello to his own inner socialist and stop embarrassing himself.

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It should surprise no one that the $150,000 extreme makeover Gov. Sarah Palin and her family received after she joined the McCain ticket was paid for by others — in this case, the Republican Party.

After all, Palin bills the state of Alaska for her children’s travel expenses and collects per diem for the many days she spends at home in Wasilla.

All of which makes one wonder: Is she the hockey mom she claims to be or a welfare mom?

1. Every recent independent poll indicatesthe race between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Louisville businessman Bruce Lunsford is a dead heat. A SurveyUSA poll released today had tied at 48 percent each. A Research 2000 poll released earlier this week gave McConnell a 4-point lead (46-42). With the margin of error taken into account, that’s a virtual tie as well. And last month’s Courier-Journal Bluegrass Poll had the candidates tied at 41 percent. Lunsford should get a bit of a bump later this week when former President Bill Clinton, who remains popular in this state, makes a couple of Western Kentucky appearances on his behalf. Ultimately, though, Lunsford has to make his own case to Kentucky voters if he wants to pull one of the biggest political upsets this state has seen. His ability to dip into his own deep pockets to self-finance a lot of this campaign got him close. The collapse of the nation’s financial system drew him dead even. Over the final two weeks of the campaign, he has to close the sale with a message that makes a specific case for change.

2. Sen. Barack Obama goes into “red state” Missouri and pulls a crowd of 100,000. Sen. John McCain visits a few days later and draws about 2,000. Small wonder that McCain is appearing increasingly cranky as this race progresses. By the time it’s over, he may set a new standard for that word.

CORRECTION: This post originally said Sarah Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which was reported by The New York Times. The Times later reported that it was Todd Palin, not his wife, who was once a member of that party.

You’re Sen. John McCain, and you’re running for president. One of your biggest criticisms of your Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, is his lack of experience. So, what do you do? You ask American voters to put Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. And by comparison to Palin’s lack of experience, Obama now looks like Winston Churchill.

Worse, you apparently made this selection after the worst vetting job this side of Thomas Eagleton’s shock treatments.

In another previous life, she supported Sen. Ted Stevens infamous Bridge to Nowhere, which she now claims to have been instrumental in stopping. And that big-time reputation for taking on the good ol’ boys of Alaskan politics doesn’t gibe with the fact that she once worked for a 527 group organized by the goodest ol’ boy of all, none other than Stevens himself.

Then, there is that messy little investigation into whether Palin fired the state’s public safety commissoner after he refused to be pressured by her staff, her family and herself into firing her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper.

Finally, it turns out Palin’s abstinence only approach to sex education didn’t take on her teenage daughter Bristol, who is now with child.

Yep, worst vetting job since Eagleton. And the rapidity with which she is becoming a national joke may well mean that she soon joins him in the history book.

By the way, if you’re McCain, in addition to criticizing Obama’s lack of experience, you also have been making a big deal out of questioning his judgment. Well, the New York Times News Service reported that your vetting team didn’t even arrive in Alaska until Thursday, one day before you tried to seize the momentum after the Democratic National Convention by announcing her as your running mate.

One day - if that - of vetting someone you want to be a heartbeat from the Oval Office? Now, that’s some rush to judgment.