Two more days until Democratic Christmas this year: Tuesday, November 6.

As for my election night plans, I plan on live-blogging the results via a map of Kentucky as I did back in the May primary. Most everyone with an internet connection can get the number results, but for the visual thinkers out there, I’ll lay out the geography of the results for both the gubernatorial race and secretary of state.

Al Cross (I), the kingpin of political journalism in Kentucky, offers us this week on the Sunday pages of the Courier-Journal his take on the dynamics of the present election and what they mean for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R).

In final days, not much hope remains for Fletcher

Kentuckians are about to vote in a most unusual election for governor.

The two campaigns are going full steam, as if the outcome will be decided in the final hours. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is on the radio in his hometown of Louisville, urging voters to re-elect Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

But all available polls suggest that Democrat Steve Beshear will hand Fletcher a crushing defeat, perhaps with a margin rivaling those of recent Democratic governors whose elections were, in the end, not fully contested: Julian Carroll, who won by 25.7 percent of the vote in 1975, and John Y. Brown Jr., who won by 26.3 in 1979. Heck, Beshear might even get near his old nemesis Wallace Wilkinson (29.6 in 1987) and his buddy Brereton Jones (29.5 in 1991), even though he is running against an incumbent governor who was elected by 10.1 percent, a record for a Republican in Kentucky.

[…]

This confounds those of us who thought the race would narrow as anti-Fletcher Republicans, such as those who voted for Anne Northup in the primary, came home to their party. They don’t appear to be moving. In The Courier-Journal’s latest Bluegrass Poll, GOP voters charted almost exactly the same as they did in September — 25 percent for Beshear and 9 percent undecided.

[…]

Another way Fletcher got elected was also unusual, if not unique. His predecessors got elected by building a political organization of their own; he had organizations handed to him by his Republican colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation. These organizations helped him get elected, but their primary loyalty remained elsewhere. So, when he got in trouble, he lacked a strong political network to guide and defend him.

The lack of organizational help was exemplified by the attitude of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the state Republican kingpin, who helped push Fletcher into the race. He put too much value on Fletcher’s track record of winning elections and seemed not to ask himself if Fletcher could manage the politically complex job of governor. (Fletcher, asked to explain why he almost ignored the huge crowd at his first Governor’s Derby Breakfast, said, “I have a hard time thinking politically.”)

When the scandal hit, McConnell treated Fletcher as if the Governor were radioactive. When Northup challenged Fletcher, McConnell called her a formidable candidate, but he didn’t follow up with the backing that Northup supporters expected. So, he managed to alienate two elements of his own party, just as he was starting what he has said will be his toughest campaign for re-election.

In the general election, McConnell has been complimentary of Fletcher and helped him raise money. That help, and his radio ads, may help assuage some Fletcherites, but 1995 gubernatorial nominee Larry Forgy keeps railing against the senator and may challenge him next year — a quixotic exercise but one that could cause more damage.

The last big Republican kingpin was Louie Nunn, governor from 1967-71. He ran for the Senate in 1972, when Richard Nixon was carrying Kentucky by more than 300,000 votes, but lost to little-known Democrat Dee Huddleston by 35,000. The usual reason cited is Nunn’s sales-tax increase, but the scales may have been tipped by Republican defections in the old 5th Congressional District, where his administration had problems keeping patronage-oriented Republicans happy, and in Jefferson County, where scars remained from his bloody 1967 primary battle with County Judge Marlow Cook.

Louie Nunn never fully healed those scars, and they cost him. Next year, McConnell is a much stronger bet than Nunn was, but he has suffered fresh scars lately, and Democrats smell blood.

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One of the more interesting passages above is Cross’s statement that it confounded conventional wisdom in Kentucky that Republicans didn’t unite around Fletcher in the end. Many people expect that McConnell will have a far easier time reuniting his base despite its splintering in this 2007 gubernatorial race. The problem with that scenario is that it doesn’t recognize how dissatisfied even Republicans are with the status quo of their party. Yes, there is that core of the party that’s marching alongside McConnell and Pres. George W. Bush over the impending political cliff like a bunch of lemmings, but there’s also a sizable portion that wants a new direction.

It’s true that this phenomenon is far more discernible on a national level than in Kentucky because Kentucky Republicans tend not to be the brightest bulbs or outside-the-box thinkers. Yet, when you combine the KY GOP faction that will be clamoring for change and views McConnell as an obstruction to that change (however small that group is) with the Forgy/Fletcher that will stop at nothing to tear McConnell down, then you have a formidable opposition.

Enough to defeat McConnell in a primary? Almost assuredly not. Enough to help Democrats defeat him in the general election. You bet.

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Al Cross, veteran political journalist and director of the UK’s Institute for Rural Journalism offers an outstanding post-Fancy Farm round up of the sorry political position of Governor Ernie Fletcher (R).

I’ve included the entire column below, but one of Cross’s best observations is that Fletcher and Senator Mitch McConnell (R) are trying to sell Kentuckians on the scary liberal bit, a favorite of McConnell’s, once again. The problem? It doesn’t have the salience it for the past generation? Why? Because conservatives are the scary ones now. They’re the ones bent on needless, endless, and fruitless war. They’re the ones allied with fundamentalist Christians out to purify the nation of anything they deem unfit in others (they ignore that log in their own eye, you know). They’re the ones who’ve spent the nation into trillions of dollars of more debt. They’re the ones who want to throw science out of the laboratory and our schools’ classrooms for the sake of their fairy tales. They’re the ones who’ve allowed our middle class to waste away for the sake of free markets that are anything but.

CONSERVATIVES ARE SCARY!

And, also, for the record, every blogger — both on the left and the right — who attended Fancy Farm and who went on record themselves agreed that, objectively, by some factor Democratic activists outnumbered Republican activists. The one person who disagreed with us was Bill Bartleman of the Paducah Sun, which is a paper almost entirely unread within the blogosphere because it’s subscription only (and a conservative rag, I might add). Bartleman said it was a 50/50 divide. The blogosphere called him on it, and his only response was that unnamed reporters also agreed with him.

Well, notice in the column below that Al Cross certainly doesn’t.

Divided party haunts Fletcher
Can hard-right issues turn tide?

FANCY FARM, Ky. — The political speaking at the Fancy Farm Picnic is not an educational exercise. It is rhetorical and theatrical, testing politicians’ mettle and wits more than their minds and ideas. But it can help you understand an election.

Last weekend, the Democrats in the raucous crowd didn’t lose a single shouting contest, as they clearly outnumbered Republicans. The turnout showed how Democratic partisans are unified and energized behind the gubernatorial candidacy of Steve Beshear, and how much ground Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher still has to make up in his own party.

The latest evidence: a Survey USA automated poll, taken Saturday through Monday, showing that most of the Republicans who voted for Anne Northup in the primary probably are for Beshear.

With such a weak and fractured party, Fletcher has to build a new base for this election. He is taking the only route available: social conservatism.

Beshear handed Fletcher a wedge issue by supporting casinos at horse-race tracks and up to four other sites. That plan won’t fit on a bumper sticker; Fletcher’s already does: “Say NO to Casinos.” In politics, simplicity can be a virtue. In a contest of ideas, those who frame the debate and keep it understandable usually win.

Beshear spent much time in his picnic speech defending his plan, continuing Fletcher’s control of the “free media” or “earned media” phase of the race, abetted by wrangling over the special legislative session. Democrats got so antsy about the media angle that Mark Nickolas revived his BluegrassReport.org political blog.

But the anti-casino argument, from a governor who once said he wouldn’t oppose a referendum on the issue, seems unlikely to trump the ingrained, negative opinions voters have about him — in a state where horses are now the main agricultural product and $1 billion a year goes to other states’ casinos.

Fletcher says Beshear’s plan makes the election a referendum on the issue, but that’s an incomplete strategy for victory. When voters approved a lottery in 1988, only 17 of the 120 counties voted against it. That’s about as many as Fletcher would carry with such a limited message.

So, gambling and Fletcher’s exaggerations of its evils are just the point of entry for a broader argument aimed at socially conservative Democrats — that Beshear is a liberal pushed by “liberal media,” a construction often used by Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose handiwork is apparent in the campaign.

In his picnic speech, Fletcher didn’t mention abortion (perhaps because folks who vote on that issue are pretty well informed about candidates’ stands on it) or Democrats’ special-session bugaboo, domestic-partner benefits at universities. He did mention the potent issues of guns and the Ten Commandments, complete with theatrical props, but on both violated the commandment against bearing false witness.

“If he had his way, local communities could take away your guns,” Fletcher said. His campaign said that referred to Beshear’s opinion as attorney general that Louisville could impose a waiting period to buy a handgun. The facts fail to support the charge.

Fletcher said we won’t find the commandments in schools and courthouses because Beshear said they had to go. Wrong again. The Supreme Court said that, and Beshear said (in a case only about schools) the Court had to be obeyed.

If Fletcher gets his facts straight, such arguments may shore up his GOP base, but he will remain a tough sell in the other party. Still, socially conservative Democrats could be persuaded to stay home, making the election more competitive. And the X Factor is Fletcher’s four-year incumbency, something never truly tested in Kentucky. But the national winds are blowing against Republicans, and the fall looks Democratic.

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As we pointed out here earlier this week, the main stream media has begun to pick up on the fact that Mitch McConnell is vulnerable, very vulnerable, in next year’s election. Both the Lexington Herald Leader and the Courier Journal ran columns today highlighting Senator Mitch McConnell’s problems heading into 2008.

Larry Dale Keeling at the HL even gives a shout our team here at Ditch Mitch while pointing to the fact that McConnell is also being attacked by his base and highlights DraftForgy.com.

McConnell is skewered daily by blogs on the left (DitchMitchKy) and the right (DraftForgy). He’s already being targeted by TV ads paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and a group called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Al Cross at the CJ clearly lays out the major problems facing McConnell: his unwavering support for President Bush and his ill-conceived war in Iraq and his failed leadership on the immigration overhaul he fought for before voting to kill at the eleventh hour.

After keeping President Bush’s immigration bill alive, he voted to kill it in the face of energized opposition, including advertising that lumped the Kentucky conservative with liberal lion Teddy Kennedy.

He took a tough public shot from an unnamed colleague speaking through conservative columnist Robert Novak, contending that he failed to show leadership during the closing hours of the immigration debate.

He was the target of attack ads from antiwar groups linking him with Bush’s increasingly unpopular policy in Iraq, as he led the effort to block a vote on legislation that would have started a withdrawal.

While Larry Dale Keeling writes that the Dems don’t really have any “A” list candidates in the upcoming election, Al Cross correctly points out that Stumbo is one of the best campaigners in the party and has a lot of statewide name recognition. And, Keeling himself admits that Iraq war veteran Andrew Horne would be an attractive option for Dems against McConnell in an election that will largely be about the mess in Iraq.

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