Don’t Waste Your Money on Kentucky’s Amy McGrath.
Please stop donating to her.
For months if not years, the left has often been told that the vocalization of skepticism about the Democratic party means that they must support Donald Trump. One can rarely pose a critique of Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden without a liberal on Twitter responding with: “so you’re voting with Trump and the Republicans then?”, or “talking like this only helps Trump and Republicans win”. Among the Democrats who have been defended with these all too familiar lines is the Democratic challenger for Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Amy McGrath. Funnily enough, it was Amy McGrath (who has campaigned as a pro-Trump democrat) that released an ad implying that Mitch McConnell is the reason that Trump can’t get his agenda done.
An ad she also happened to share in the critical swing state of Ohio, that Biden actually has a chance of winning.
Aside from the affirmations that she is a “pro- Trump Democrat”, the ad also features a strange nod to conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who McGrath has previously said she would have voted to confirm. It should come as no surprise that FiveThirtyEight favors Mitch McConnell to win the election against her, with the odds at 96 to 4. And yet, that hasn’t stopped Amy McGrath from raising nearly fifty million dollars in the last quarter alone (more money than McConnell).
When it comes to politics, I genuinely cannot think of a bigger waste of money than to donate to a candidate like Amy McGrath, and sometimes I can’t help thinking about all the ways that money could have been used instead. Imagine if that money was being donated to state legislature candidates in swing states or down ballot candidates all throughout the country for that matter, who might have a real shot at flipping the seat. Imagine if everyone who had donated to Amy McGrath’s campaign donated to a candidate like Adam Christensen instead.
Even putting personal politics and feelings about her as a candidate aside, this is about strategy, and wasting our money on a candidate like McGrath — who continues to trail in the polls no matter how much money average Americans or high dollar donors thrown at her — is objectively not a smart approach. Democrats have a real shot at potentially flipping the Senate and taking even more seats in the house. As nice as it is to envision what our government would look like without Mitch McConnell lurking within the halls of the Senate for another six years, at this point we have to accept the fact that Amy McGrath is not going to defeat him. We might be on the verge of flipping the Senate, but Amy McGrath just isn’t going to be a part of that. For anyone concerned about getting Mitch McConnell out of his position of power, why not find candidates in tight races whose victories will ensure that Republicans become the minority?
All that being said, I can’t help thinking about how Amy McGrath quite literally represents everything I have come to find so frustrating and despise about not just the Democratic party, but the rampant corruption of our Government overall.
Considering the fact that we nearly had Charles Booker running against McConnell instead — and probably would have if the media had given him the attention he needed just a month or so earlier — I know Amy McGrath was not the best that Chuck Schumer and the DSCC could find. I know they could do better than yet another corporate Democrat who still doesn’t understand that when faced with the choice between Republican and Republican-lite, Republican voters are almost always going to go with the real thing. And therein lies the problem. Schumer and McGrath alike are both indicative of a supposed “opposition” party that is paid by their high dollar campaign contributors to not really be much of an opposition at all. Amy McGrath is nothing more than a cog in the machine in which the wealthy are funding both the weakest Democrats, and the strongest Republicans.
For now, while we hope that Charles Booker (who was polling significantly better against McConnell than McGrath was, and now has the name recognition) runs again next time, donate to elections outside of the Kentucky Senate Race. Even if McGrath could win, it certainly doesn’t appear as though she needs the money anyways. Amy McGrath is not the ticket to victory, and our energy could be better spent on more politically savvy candidates who actually have a chance.
We can do better. We deserve better.
