Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's team has set the tone for his reelection bid against Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, releasing a merciless attack ad Tuesday highlighting her history of loony public statements as well as her record of left-wing liberalism.

It seems the Kentucky Republican would like to end this race as soon as possible, or at least to define his opponent before her campaign even begins. Then again, when your opponent's campaign is such a target rich environment of opposition research gold, where finding damning material is the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack of needles, why not go for the throat?

The one quote that McGrath, a retired fighter pilot, will likely have the hardest time explaining on the campaign stump in deep, deep red Kentucky is her comparison of the election of Donald Trump to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of an estimated 3,000 Americans.

"And then, of course, the results of the election, we have a new commander-in-chief,” the failed congressional candidate said at a Meet the Candidates Series event on Nov. 20, 2017. “And that morning I woke up like somebody had sucker punched me. I mean, I felt like, ‘what has just happened to my country?’"

She added, “The only feeling I can describe that's any close to it was the feeling I had after 9/11. ‘What just happened, where are we going from here?' and it was that just sinking feeling of sadness, and I didn't know what to do."

Trump took 63% of the vote in Kentucky 2016 and defeated Hillary Clinton by a 30-point margin. So good luck explaining that one away.

McGrath literally boasted on tape that she is “more progressive” than anyone else residing in the Bluegrass State — hard to represent people who don't share your values. She has already lost one campaign against a much weaker Republican in a much more favorable jurisdiction, and she has a long road ahead of her this time. The last person to challenge McConnell for that Senate seat, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, lost by 16 points in 2014.

McConnell's rock-bottom approval ratings had led the media to frame that race as competitive, but Lundergan-Grimes' defeat was the first race called on election night. She lost by more than Democratic Sen. Cory Booker's challenger, the late Jeff Bell, who as the Republican nominee took a very respectable 42% of the vote in New Jersey that year and lost by only 13 points.

Couple those data points with McConnell’s early nuclear salvo, and it looks like the 2020 Kentucky Senate election will be as brutal as any — for McGrath, at least.