Even for Mitch McConnell, this is ugly. Anyone receiving the mailer pictured above would probably think they were about to be arrested for daring to vote. Instead, it's just the same old Republican pro-coal nonsense inside with a scary outer wrapper. Now the Grimes campaign is suing over it, claiming that it's an obvious attempt to suppress turnout, which it is.
It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the Republicans want voters to think they might be committing voter fraud of some sort, and to consequently stay home on Election Day. The real irony here is that the GOP have been screaming about voter fraud as a wafer-thin excuse for Voter ID laws and other forms of Jim Crow era disenfranchisement, and then they engage in tactics like this. But overall, this is in keeping with the entire strategy that includes Voter ID, purges and so forth: reduce the number of voters. Fewer voters means a better result for the GOP. It’s a plot as old as Paul Weyrich’s infamous “goo-goo syndrome” speech in which admitted that Republican “leverage in the election goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
The latest Kentucky poll shows Grimes down by 5 points, but the polls aren't necessarily reliable indicators because they assume Democrats won't come out to vote.
Chris Hayes featured this mailer earlier tonight. His guest pointed out that East Kentucky already has about 25 percent of its vote suppressed because felons can't vote. It looks like McConnell wants to take care of the rest, because if he can't win it fairly, he's fine with cheating, as are his billionaires.
Come on, Kentucky. You can pull this off. Just ignore this crap and go vote.
