Sure, it’s a dilemma.
Give Ohio to Trump, or knock off McConnell. Which would you choose? It’s kind of a Sophie’s Choice, isn’t it?
Amy McGrath ran the ad. It probably won’t cost Biden Ohio. And it probably won’t win McGrath a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky. But there’s a chance Biden could keep Ohio and McGrath could defeat McConnell. There’s also a chance Biden could lose Ohio and McConnell could keep his Senate seat.
The ad features a working-class man from Paducah, Kentucky, a city on the Ohio River whose two largest employers are health care providers (the next largest is a WalMart store), who supports Trump but doesn’t like McConnell’s votes for trade deals that sent jobs overseas.
There are many more like him in Kentucky, and McGrath’s only hope of winning is peeling away a substantial number of Trump voters from McConnell. It might be possible. But to reach the Paducah market, McGrath has to run the ad on broacast stations in Cincinatti, across the river. So she did. Read the details here.
I think Democratic diehards should go easy on McGrath. She isn’t trying to help Trump. McConnell is so odious and destructive it’s worth taking some risk to get rid of him. You certainly can argue that Trump is even more odious and destructive, which I won’t dispute, but the polls suggest Biden can make do without Ohio if things go south there.
Won’t it be nice if President Biden and Senator McGrath go to work in a Trump- and McConnell-free capitol next year? Washington D.C. will still be a swamp, but with two fewer alligators.
Photo: Main street, Paducah, Kentucky