Newly announced Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath is expected to lose next fall to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, assuming she gets the nomination.
But it will not be for NBC’s lack of trying!
The Peacock Network and its employees are really, really excited for her candidacy. Like, weirdly excited.
McGrath, a retired fighter pilot whose electoral record currently stands at 0-1, launched her candidacy early Tuesday morning, claiming in an announcement video that McConnell was elected “a lifetime ago” and that he has “bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise. … A place where ideals go to die.”
“I’m running for Senate because it shouldn’t be like this,” she adds. “There is a path to resetting our country’s moral compass.
Shortly after declaring her candidacy on social media, McGrath appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where the hosts played her three-minute and eight-second campaign announcement video in its entirety.
“That was an incredible rollout,” said Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski, who then invited McGrath to explain how she plans to get “the people of Kentucky to hear that message.”
The interview concluded with a slavish show of devotion from MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle, whose personal website laughably bills him as “journalist.” He said:
Now we all sat here and watched your rollout commercial, which was incredibly powerful. And one of the ways you can get people to vote, obviously, is based on emotion, before you even get to the con that they’re living under.
If you think that is bad, just wait until Barnicle gets to his actual question.
“So let’s cut to the chase,” he said. “What’s your website? Because people who saw that commercial are going to want to donate to you. What’s your website?” (He didn’t directly ask for the contributions, at least.)
McGrath, of course, took the opportunity to plug her campaign website for Morning Joe’s audience.
Host Joe Scarborough closed out the segment by saying, “When Mitch McConnell comes on our show we will also mention his website. But for the record her website it Amy McGrath dot com.” His colleagues laughed as he managed to fit in a few more plugs for her website, saying, “That’s Amy McGrath dot com. If you are outside of Kentucky, Amy McGrath dot com. And, like I said, when Mitch comes on, we’ll do the same thing.”
McGrath should send them a gift basket for that in-kind donation to her candidacy.
It should not be ignored that NBC’s coverage of McGrath’s candidacy technically started on the eve of her announcement, when the Peacock Network published a ludicrous “exclusive” report revealing McConnell’s great-great-grandfathers owned slaves.
Wow, what luck that the network chose to run this story just hours before McGrath announced. Such weird coincidences!
“Sen. Mitch McConnell’s great-great-grandfathers owned 14 slaves, bringing reparations issue close to home,” reads the headline.
Pro tip: “Great-great” is not exactly “close to home” — a lot of people can’t even name their great-great-grandfather. Next time, try to narrow the opposition research to at least the last century. Also, now that the network has shown that it has the time and the will to do such ancient historical research, it will be interesting to see if NBC dedicates the same amount of energy to spelunking through the 2020 Democratic primary candidates’ ancestral records. Because there is at least one individual running right now whose heritage could use a thorough examination.
Elsewhere at NBC, Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt tweeted Tuesday morning in reference to McGrath’s announcement, “This is going to be a blockbuster race.”
This is going to be a blockbuster race https://t.co/NEiuSu6tCl
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) July 9, 2019
This is not a knock specifically against Hunt, whose reporting is generally tough and fair. Rather, her remark is emblematic of what is apparently the consensus in her newsroom: That McConnell’s challenger is new, fresh, and exciting, that this she is a serious candidate with a serious chance of winning, and that NBC could not be more excited for her.
Hoo boy, get ready for Betomania all over again.
