It feels as if a lot’s happened since our last sermon, but I’ve used up my five free articles in the Courier Journal this month, so despite a week off, this column’s going to be a hard slog. I have no idea what’s going on.
That’s never held you back before. Fair dibs, though — that week off felt like a month at Butlin’s: It gave me a weekend free from editing that toilet copy you supply me with. And yet, in the blink of an eye, here we are again. Like they say, the days are long, but the weeks are short.
I’m glad we missed last week, too. I was all set to go ahead and endorse Edelen, despite having called Holland’s refusal to share his tax returns disqualifying, so I missed the chance to embarrass us with another duff endorsement. Dodged a bullet there.
I’m not sure you understand how this works. If you were going to write something stupid and through no fault of your own didn’t, the best advice would’ve been to keep shtum and pretend you were backing the right horse all along.
Noted. What I liked about Edelen and still do, is that he has zero hesitation in saying who he is and what he supports. Liberal isn’t a dirty word to him. And he doesn’t give a shit who knows it. Look where being coy about being liberal got Conway and Lundergan Grimes. Anyway, at least we have a few months of slagging off to look forwards to, meaning we won’t get fired by LEO just yet.
Like you, I love a platform to pontificate on, but the flip side is that this column also forces me to stay in a relationship with you — which is one of the great agonies of my life. Never mind the added Herculean labour required to make your copy digestible. In comparison, choosing a candidate to endorse for the governorship is a piece of piss.
Sweet segue, you’ve learned from the best. Do you think Beshear can win?
In a two-horse race against the country’s most unpopular governor who barely scraped through his own primary? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he can’t.
Don’t be facetious. We’ve said all along that Bevin is a strong favourite regardless of how unpopular he is on a personal level and clearly, even in the more rural parts of the state where he’s about as popular as a plate of pork sausages at a bar mitzvah, he still has support. But Beshear can win.
Probably right, but Bevin ought to be the bookies’ favourite no matter what the polls or gut nous tell us. That said, he has a bugger’s load of work to do, and I’m not sure how inclined he is to do it. He’s always struck me as incredibly lazy, for all of his ambition, which is typical of many who inherit wealth and station. Sits around dishing out orders without putting in the work required to make sure it’s all done legally, hence his court won-loss ratio being even worse than our crystal ball gazing.
And for all the fuss it caused in the primary, Edelen bringing up Beshear’s work as a lawyer — no matter how much that backfired for Edelen — probably did Beshear a proper favour since I find it hard to believe Bevin won’t fight dirty. It’s the only way he knows how to fight.
Beshear has to roll his sleeves up, try to avoid getting into personal spats with Bevin right now and get into the countryside and talk healthcare. Hard yards, but probably his best route to winning. Make sure people know Bevin will take away their healthcare if he hasn’t already. It’s his strongest argument. But he has to make his case as face-to-face as he can and use Bevin’s obscene proposed budget cuts as a cudgel to beat the ‘pro-life’ bollocks out of him. And he should probably play up the fact that, unlike our current governor, he’s actually a Kentuckian.
What else has Bevin got? Job growth? Corruption? Didn’t some Beshear aide end up doing bird for taking bribes?
Right, but Beshear has a fairly compelling answer to that: The bloke’s doing bird. Rule of law and such-like, no exceptions. Beshear didn’t let him off the hook or any shit like that, and we all make hiring mistakes. I hired you once, after all.
And if I were Bevin I’d probably want to keep corruption out of it. I mean, he’s got a cheap mansion and a Russian aluminium investment to consider, never mind kissing arse for a job at the most corrupt White House in history. And as for job growth, that’s about as weak as it gets. The only states with worse job growth than Kentucky are North Dakota, Vermont and Alaska. Any argument that puts us behind Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi is a pretty shitty argument.
Hark at you with all your learnin’. Maybe all those years fagging at Reigate Academy for Young Ponces paid off.
So, really what I’m saying is that if Beshear does everything I say, he’ll canter home. Or at least give himself a fighting chance, which is probably the best we can hope for. Bevin is very beatable, and I wouldn’t even be that bothered by Trump coming to rally the faithful. The faithful alone can’t win it for Bevin, even in Kentucky.
So, are we going to select Beshear or Bevin?
It should be obvious who we’re endorsing as the clear choice to help Kentucky succeed.
Beshear?
Absolutely.
And so we pick him to win, right?
Hell no. Based on our track record of picking losers we have only one choice for governor: Matt Bevin.
