Retrospect and Introspect

Five years ago Jack Conway ran a dismal campaign and the result was 6 years of Rand Paul. Then Alison Lundergan Grimes lost the Senate race and gave us 6 more years of Mitch McConnell, the architect of the "just say no" policy of his national party. Now a clueless Democratic Party has allowed a candidate who is the worst campaigner I have ever seen to represent the party. Again he lost and we have a Tea Party governor who had coattails. This is not just a failure of candidates but one that can be laid at the feet of a party that has not emphasized the strengths of the party of the people. By not carrying the message of being the party that supports the common people and by trying to be Republican lite we ran from our strengths. I don't see any party leaders capable of being transformative. As long as we run away from the successes of the party we will not be successful.

The coattails of Matt Bevin carried all but two of the constitutional office candidates into office. The two Democratic candidates who won are Alison Lundergan Grimes as Secretary of State and Beshear for Attorney General. THIS SHOULD NOT BE INTERPRETED AS THESE TWO BEING THE ONES TO CARRY THE PARTY FORWARD. They ran just as hard to the right and escaped by the skin of their teeth. Along with our legislative leaders these people are damaged goods and must prove themselves worthy of carrying the party banner. The Senate minority leader, a democrat naturally, said the party has moved too far to the left. Nonsense, it is the message. It is no secret that Adam Edelen hopes to run against Rand Paul next year but he better put his big boy britches on because as it is he has nothing to sell.

A friend of mine who is of the opposite political persuasion asked me just exactly what successes the Democratic Party has to run on? A fair question given the miserable performance of the standard bearers. I will name a few but, make no mistake, the candidates can't just change the TV sound byte and make it work. It will take a period of messaging and organizing that Jack Conway spurned saying “that's not the way campaigns are run any more.” This is how successful campaigns are ALWAYS run and it showed a remarkable absence of good sense to say that.

The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, KyNect, whatever you choose to call, it has been a spectacular success and half a million Kentuckians who did not have medical care now do. It has opened the door for entrepreneurship by removing the link between a job and medical care. Primary care doctors are swamped by a pent up demand for previously unavailable health care. The access to preventable care will necessarily diminish the need for more expensive emergency care. Since the advent of the ACA in Kentucky hospitals have been able to reduce the costs of indigent care by $100 million. How on earth does a party fail to capitalize on a success like that? In a move that is stunning democratic candidates ran away from it. Bevin has promised to do away with it and will at least succeed in making it less affordable. Many of those half million don't vote and the GOP knows that. That has to change even if we have to pick them up and carry them to the polls the way we used to.

Give up obeisance to King Coal. Every industry has a life span and the black rock that burns is nearing the end of its lifespan. Technology is making it obsolete. By any measure the transition to other sources of power will generate millions of jobs that will be much better jobs than those that require despoiling streams and driving climate change. Someone has to go sell it to the displaced miners who need hope instead of imaginary employment in an office park built on an old strip mine. The only reason candidates hold on to King Coal is because of the money it puts into campaign coffers. The world is moving on. Get on board.

How on earth can the party that made mines safer places to work, gave us the 40 hour work week, insured a small stipend to retirees and made it possible to earn enough money to escape poverty not capitalize on that? I'll tell you how. BY GIVING UP THOSE VALUES.

It is painfully obvious that many Kentuckians voted against their own interests, I am told of teachers whose pension plan is at stake, considering the cultural and moral values of Matt Bevin to be superior and voted for the man that wants to place pensions into the hands of private enterprise. Well, that is their prerogative and I will not castigate them for that. They should have enough sense to know which is important to them. To be fair it has to be acknowledged that there are genuine ideological differences that cause people to vote the way they do and that does not necessarily make them wrong. It just means that I see it differently and that I think that the message of the party could be better presented and executed.

The issue of gay marriage and the Kim Davis affair is likely what drove a large number of voters. It is inescapable that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did and that the law must be followed in the same way that integration was forced at Little Rock. You don't have to like it but you do have to understand that it is the law and that no governor is going to have the power to negate it. Yes, you can be angry and vote in protest but that will be like cutting off your nose to spite your face as my Mom used to say. The Democratic Party has to draw the link from protection of civil rights for some to protection for all.

My Take is that the Kentucky Democratic Party needs to refine its message going forward and return to some basics of organizing the vote. This does NOT mean moving to the extreme left but it does mean that principles of government being an asset to the people rather than a hindrance as the GOP says have to be shown to be preferable. As we are fond of quoting “elections have consequences” and rightly so. Right now the state party finds itself lost in the weeds much the same as the national GOP is. Their mistakes do not have to be repeated.