John David Dyche

Mitch McConnell’s enemies threw everything they had at him. National Democrats, Hollywood, climate change cultists, organized labor zealots, Kentucky’s openly liberal editors and secretly liberal reporters, and bitter tea party true believers did their worst to defeat him.

But McConnell beat them and by a lot more – 15 percent – than even the most optimistic poll predicted. He dispelled myths perpetuated by his impotent media adversaries. Before they start minimizing the magnitude of his triumph, let’s review some of the myths McConnell busted with his huge win.

n Myth No. 1: The Clintons help Democrats: Much of Kentucky’s political press still swoons whenever Bill or Hillary Clinton comes around. McConnell must smile since he wins whenever the Clintons come to the commonwealth to campaign against him.

How many times can the Clintons come to Kentucky before it stops being news? The Clintons were here a lot during this campaign, but there is no evidence the presence of American’s most celebrated pair of political grifters helped Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Closeness to the Clintons apparently hurt Grimes. As Clinton appearances became practically daily fare late in the campaign, McConnell’s lead over Grimes in the polls got bigger.

That should concern Hillary since the visits had as much to do with her all-but-certain 2016 presidential campaign as they did with helping Grimes.

n Myth No. 2: Bluegrass polls matter: The Courier-Journal, WHAS, the Lexington Herald-Leader and WKYT commissioned Bluegrass Polls conducted by SurveyUSA and trumpeted the results. These polls smelled funny at the time and really stink now.

RealClearPolitics.com lists 34 polls in the Kentucky Senate race from December through October 2014. Only four showed Grimes ahead, and three of those were SurveyUSA Bluegrass Polls. The other was from June.

In October, a SurveyUSA Bluegrass Poll showed Grimes ahead by 2 points as multiple other polls during the same time period showed McConnell leading by as much as 6 points. A headline in The Courier-Journal trumpeted, “Grimes surges ahead of McConnell in poll.”

Another SurveyUSA Bluegrass Poll two weeks later showed McConnell up by 1 point even as the other polls immediately before and after it showed him ahead by 8 and 6 points, respectively.

The last SurveyUSA Bluegrass Poll of the campaign in October finally conformed to other polling. It showed McConnell leading by 5 points, which was still a smaller lead than in other polls and 10 points below the ultimate outcome.

A similar pattern is evident in SurveyUSA polling in the 2008 Kentucky Senate race between McConnell and Democrat Bruce Lunsford and the 2010 Kentucky Senate race between Democrat Jack Conway and Republican Rand Paul. So in the last three Kentucky Senate campaigns, at least one and sometimes two SurveyUSA polls prior to the last one have produced results more favorable to the Democrat than other polls taken the same time.

These results produced pro-Democrat publicity, especially from some of the sponsoring entities which would also endorse the Democrat in those races, and an illusion of Democratic momentum as the campaign came down the home stretch.

n Myth No. 3: McConnell has “lost a step”:

This was a favorite theme of state media eager to construct an anti-McConnell narrative. And there were some uncharacteristic miscues in the 72-year-old McConnell’s primary campaign or associated with his former campaign manager Jesse Benton.

But McConnell campaigned with energy, sprinted across the finish line and displayed his savvy along the way. Respected political analyst Charlie Cook called McConnell’s campaign “flawless” and rated it the best of the cycle.

McConnell not only got the jump on Grimes with his offer of early, multiple one-on-one debates, which she refused, but bested her in their publicized joint appearance on Kentucky Educational Television. His ad about helping Noelle Hunter get her daughter back was the campaign’s best.

n Myth No. 4: McConnell is unpopular

McConnell’s bitter, disappointed critics in Kentucky’s political press will probably keep harping that he is unpopular. “The only politician more unpopular than Mitch McConnell is Barack Obama,” one wishfully wrote for a national publication in an embarrassing journalistic display of what psychiatrists might diagnose as projection.

Hello? Really? Ever heard of Alison Lundergan Grimes? Somehow she is more popular than McConnell, but nonetheless just lost to him in a landslide? Are you smoking non-industrial hemp?

The supposedly unpopular McConnell is celebrating his eighth general election victory without a loss, extending his likely unbreakable record as Kentucky’s longest-serving senator, and preparing to be the Senate majority leader and highest ranking Kentuckian in national politics in over half a century. There are a lot of politicians who would give almost anything to be so unpopular!

— John David Dyche is a Louisville attorney and a political commentator for WDRB.com.