There are reams of opposition research that McConnell's team unearthed but didn't need on their way to crushing Bevin in last year's primary.
And none of that might matter one bit.
It might not matter because Bevin, the man Trump said he would've fired, could well be holding a trump card of his own if a summer of social change becomes an autumn of angry conservative defiance.
That card covers several issues — gay marriage, the Confederate flag and Planned Parenthood — but it's easier to just lump it into one category: The Obama card.
If the Democratic strategy of continuing McConnell's attacks on Bevin is crystal clear, then so is the Republican strategy of tying Conway and every other Democrat running for office to a president who has never been well-liked by the vast majority of Kentuckians.
This summer, that disdain has become a frenetic and vocal war cry as conservatives, believing their president is out to get them and that the country they love is becoming a permissive, socialist haven, are screaming at the top of their lungs for someone to push back.
That's how Trump jumped to the top of most polls measuring the 2016 Republican presidential contest despite a history of supporting liberal causes and politicians and outlandish, controversial statements that could kill the Republican Party on the national level.
But Kentucky isn't a national electorate. It's a conservative electorate and has only grown more so in the last 15 years. While the Trump school of politics is music to the ears of national Democrats, it's certainly not disqualifying in the commonwealth.
Conway has been around state government for a very long time, gathering a deep knowledge of the state's laws, interests and needs, but he also has a scarlet D behind his name.
It's an increasingly detrimental designation for a politician in Kentucky.
As Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes found out last year, the liberal Democratic bases in Louisville and Lexington are not willing to sit idly by and watch as a Democrat tries to appeal to conservative members of their party.
And as Jack Conway increasingly goes down Grimes's losing path of "I will stand up to Obama" we're coming closer and closer to putting our own Trump in Frankfort. It's a disaster waiting to happen and I don't think Conway has any clue that he's going to end up losing by double digits unless he gives Democrats in Kentucky a reason to show up at the polls.
The one good thing going is that Bevin is going to be a nightmare and a national joke by the time the 2019 race rolls around. Too bad the only thing standing between him and turning Kentucky into the next Kansas is Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who on a good day is still one of the most conservative Dems in the country.
I honestly see the next four years as "limiting the damage Bevin will do to our state" but after all, we elected Rand Paul rather easily.
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