Jonathan Chait is categorical: Ashley Judd can't win Mitch McConnell's senate seat.
... While a Mitch McConnell concession speech after losing to Ashley Judd is possibly the most gratifying political event I could possibly imagine, it is also impossible. ...Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel
But...
It is true that some Democrats in Kentucky have talked up a Judd candidacy. I think the answer here is to listen very carefully to what these Democrats are saying. One Democrat, speaking to the Times, “dismissed concerns that Ms. Judd would be a liability. On the contrary, he said, she would neutralize Mr. McConnell’s fund-raising advantage and energize opposition.”
Let me translate this. Democrats are going to lose the Senate race pretty much regardless. But Ashley Judd would raise a ton of money across the country and spend it bolstering turnout across the state, which would help other Democrats, most of whom would be distancing themselves from Judd like she was George Clooney. You know Ashley Judd’s evil husband in Double Jeopardy, who seduced her and then exploited her for an insurance scam? The campaign to lure her to run is kind of like that. ...Chait, Daily Intel
Okay. Then how about Tim Olyphant?
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Over at Salon, the view is that, though Judd probably can't win, she can sure injure the reputations of some Republican politicians.
... What’s clear is that the people attacking her will be defining themselves along with Judd. The optics of a bunch of good old boys ganging up on a local girl done good, one who loves University of Kentucky basketball and who is, to borrow Paul’s term, quite “articulate,” will have national reverberations. Even if the women and men of Kentucky don’t rise up to elect her, the women across the country who recoiled at Republicans last year will be paying attention. No wonder Planned Parenthood is targeting McConnell for his opposition to expanding insurance coverage of birth control and voting against equal pay. (What, no mention of his vote against the Violence Against Women Act?)
The same day Rove went on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Judd tweeted the following quotation, attributed to Goethe: “There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.” In other words, it looks like she gets it. ...Irin Carmon, Salon
Scratch that "probably can't win." Make it... make that "might well be elected."
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