Two new entries into two different political campaigns raise two different sets of questions. In Kentucky, former Marine combat pilot Amy McGrath has jumped into the Democratic senatorial primary for the right to run against Mitch McConnell. Also, multi-gozillionnaire and impeachment fan Tom Steyer is now running for president in the Democratic primary. Both have undeniable strengths as candidates. McGrath ran a fine congressional campaign in 2018, losing to Andy Barr by only a little over three points in Kentucky's Sixth District. Steyer, we will get to in a moment.

Already, of course, there are people whispering that McGrath is the wrong candidate in the wrong place at the wrong time, and solely because, like Barack Obama, she lost her first race for Congress. This is an odd complaint considering that a vital piece of McConnell's majority was created by the Democratic Party's insistence on running once-popular, sleep-inducing retreads: Bob Kerrey in Nebraska, or Phil Bredesen in Tennessee, for example. Those two helped bless the Senate with Deb Fischer and Marsha Blackburn, god help us all. McGrath's loss to Barr ought not to be disqualifying.

Her biggest problem, and one that she never quite solved in 2018, is trying to run as a Democratic candidate without alienating the Trump-curious rural voters of the state. (Whatever else it might mean, this invitation by the mine workers for Democratic candidates to come speak to them can't be anything but good for Kentucky Democrats like McGrath.) She won a tough primary to face Barr almost two years ago. She certainly will have the wherewithal to run against McConnell.

Mitch McConnell needs challenging—and not by another Democratic retread. Tom Williams Getty Images

Tom Steyer scares the hell out of me. First of all, he's four times as rich as Donald Trump pretends to be. He can carpetbomb the airwaves in all the early primary states and not even feel it in his bank account. He's got an issue—the climate crisis—that he's been on heavily for longer than any other candidate except Jay Inslee. And his self-financed Need To Impeach campaign, complete with television ads, which was dismissed with a hand wave as quixotic by most of the Very Smart People, is now the declared position of many of the people Steyer will run against.

So, then, with all that going for him, and his established record of being what is these days called by morons an "influencer," why would Steyer get in now? Why not keep pushing for impeachment and finance voter-registration drives all over the country, especially in places like Kentucky? His answers do not thrill me. Basically, his pitch for breaking the money power is no different from that of Senator Professor Warren and Bernie Sanders. (His riff about how corporations are not people because they have neither hearts nor children is a direct rip from Warren's career-long stump speech.) And this is not what I'm looking for at all.

Americans are deeply disappointed and hurt by the way they’re treated by what they think is the power elite in Washington, D.C. And that goes across party lines and it goes across geography.

Oh, I am tired beyond words of rich people who tell me why the political system is letting me down, and that they understand my concerns, and are uniquely positioned to help me because they are, you know, rich people, and therefore, not prone to incompetence and corruption. "Too rich to buy" has been a sucker's game for centuries. And the essential flaw in the theory is at the moment very likely to be losing what's left if his mind on the electric Twitter machine. Tom Steyer is not Donald Trump. He is not a vulgar yam and he actually has all the money he says he has. But he is...unnecessary to this political moment. He is nothing more than in the way.

Editor's Note: Mitch McConnell's home is located outside Kentucky's Sixth District. We regret the error.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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