The Huffington Post reported Saturday that Ashley Judd is planning to announce her candidacy for Senate at the end of April, setting up what would be the most intriguing Senate race of the cycle. As a media-savvy actress with nationwide name recognition—and all the free publicity and fundraising power that entails—Judd might seem a formidable general-election foe for embattled Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Alas, the race is far likelier to be entertaining than competitive.

Let's say Judd's southern charm and legitimate ties to Kentucky allow her to dismiss the charge that she's a carpetbagger. And that her more bizarre assertions, like that breeding is "unconscionable," are too disconnected from politics and too unbelievable to make a difference. And that she successfully deflects the argument that she's "radical," a word she's used to describe herself. She's still a mainstream, national Democratic candidate in a state where mainstream, national Democrats lose.

Kentucky is not kind to Democrats seeking a seat in Congress—not even conservative Democrats who do well at the state level. The party hasn't won a federal, statewide race in the state since 1996, when Bill Clinton took 46 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Democrats have had their fair share of vulnerable opponents, too, including a senile Jim Bunning in 2004, a TARP-supporting McConnell during the 2008 Democratic wave, and libertarian Rand Paul in a working class, populist state.

McConnell's case is especially telling. With the economy in recession and George W. Bush's approval rating mired in the thirties, 2008 was already a good year for Democrats before the economy collapsed in September. Then, McConnell supported the Wall Street bailout and faced a populist backlash that threatened his reelection. But despite those nearly worst-case circumstances, he defeated Democrat Bruce Lunsford, a businessman, by a convincing 6 point margin. By most accounts, McConnell even turned his insider status into an asset by emphasizing the federal spending he secured for Kentucky.

The political and economic climate should be far more hospitable in 2014 than it was in 2008. Since McConnell's last election, Kentucky has moved even further to the right. The president is deeply unpopular in Kentucky and he lost by 23 points in November. The "War on Coal," the coal industry's term for the Obama administration's EPA regulations and its push for cap and trade, dealt a devastating blow to Democratic fortunes in coal country—a region that Democrats need to carry by a large margin to win statewide.