Early last week, I offered some initial thoughts on Ashley Judd after I watched her make an appearance at a women’s reproductive health conference at George Washington University. I tried to provide some constructive criticism, because I could see that she needs to improve as a politician if she is going to have any chance of beating Mitch McConnell. Note that I didn’t take a deterministic view that she cannot win because Kentucky is too conservative or because of things she has said, or because she lives in Tennessee or because she’s too Hollywood or too liberal or too female.
My assumption is that she can win. Nate Cohn is correct that it’s hard to imagine a Judd victory, but I think Molly Redden comes closer to the mark.
Any race is inevitably complicated by the hot-button issues of the moment, campaign-trail gaffes, and outside money. For now, Republicans are content to portray Judd as a stereotypical “Hollywood liberal”; if she declares her candidacy, the attacks ads will multiply and diversify. But on her best days, Judd does not settle for being a stock character. One can imagine her embracing her radicalism as just one piece of a more complicated whole: a true Kentuckian and feminist movie star whose liberalism is as fierce as her manners are charming. To make voters believe it, though, she’ll need to deliver the performance of a lifetime.
One thing I think you can throw out the window in looking at this potential McConnell-Judd race is the recent regional voting preferences of the state. If we ran some old white dude, those demographics would matter a lot. They’d have to go into Eastern Kentucky coal country and convince those folks that they’re the Second Coming of Joe Manchin, the junior senator and former governor from West Virginia. Ashley Judd doesn’t have to do that. She couldn’t do that. She has to go into that area and convince the women that the Republicans are a bunch of bullies who don’t act like gentlemen. She needs to explain how coal jobs can be converted to better jobs, just as tobacco jobs were in the 1990’s. Mitch McConnell doesn’t fight for coal miners; he fights for their employers. Judd can go into those communities and help make sure everyone who is eligible for health care subsidies gets the information they need and gets signed up. She can take the liberal case to them because she must if she wants to win.
That’s ultimately what makes this race so interesting. It won’t be a contest to see how conservative a Democrat has to be to get elected in a red state. And, because of that, we won’t see the same breakout in the electorate.
McConnell’s strategy is straightforward. He’ll use Judd’s own past statements and associations against her. He’ll say she’s a Hollywood radical and a carpetbagger who doesn’t respect down home Kentucky values. But he better watch out because this strategy is effectively asking Kentuckians to disown one of their brightest stars, and a lot of them are not going to feel like doing that at all. A lot of people will wind up voting for Judd for no other reason than that they don’t like how she’s been treated.
A December poll by Public Policy Polling found that McConnell is the most unpopular senator in the country. That will have some easy-to-predict consequences. Because he won’t be winning any popularity contest, he needs to nationalize the issues under discussion. While protecting coal can do double-duty here, most national issues won’t be specific to Kentucky, and it’s hard to know what issues will be dominant in Washington two years from now. Another consequence is that McConnell’s low approval numbers will drive up the cost of making personal attacks. A creepy and disliked old man being disrespectful to a beautiful and charming southern belle is not exactly in keeping with Kentucky manners.
When November 2014 finally rolls around, the president probably will still be unpopular in Kentucky, although the degree is uncertain. Ashley Judd can’t worry about that. She has to make the contest about Kentucky, not Washington. And not Africa, either. Not Hollywood. Or Scotland, where she lives part of the year.
She will have to change the electorate to win, but she can do that.
