Willis L. Krumholz explains Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin’s loss — but the fact is, Democrats reelect candidates with Bevin-like traits all the time. This loss was still a failure of our side in the information war. If more Kentucky voters would’ve realize the policy mistake they were making, they would’ve stuck with Bevin just as Democrats stick with their candidates:
Matt Bevin’s loss doesn’t have anything to do with Trump, and it’s not about ‘conservatives’ versus ‘moderates,’ either. Conservatism embodies middle-class and working-class values. Why not embrace that?
Outgoing Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, just lost the governor’s house to Democrat Andy Beshear by a slim margin. But President Trump won Kentucky by almost 30 points in 2016. Most reports concluded that Bevin had pursued too conservative a path, even for Kentucky. Many others were quick to tie the election to President Trump, and Trump’s alleged unpopularity among suburban voters, relative to a plain-vanilla establishment Republican.
In the words of the Associated Press, “Democrats’ surging strength in the suburbs reflects the anxiety Trump provokes among moderates, particularly women, who have rejected his scorched-earth politics and uncompromising conservative policies on health care, education and gun violence.”
Yet in spite of MSNBC’s political analysis, Trump had nothing to do with Bevin’s loss in Kentucky. There’s actually a lesson for Republicans in the Bevin loss: Good candidates have the right personality, and serve working- and middle-class voters. As we will see, this supersedes simple terms like “moderate” and “conservative.”
Read more: The Federalist
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