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(Yeah, McConnell is running mocking ads against potential opponents 20 months before an election. He's a dick, in case you didn’t get that already.)Judd—who, I guess, is most known for Double Jeopardy or Heat?—has no prior political experience (though she has been a liberal activist for some time), but she is famous (sort of), and that is all you need to be a viable politician in the United States of America, so various Democrats have started to call her a “serious candidate.” The conservative media, who are so used to demonizing Hollywood liberals, they do it as an unconscious reflex, pointed out that Judd has said some shit in the past about it being “unconscionable to breed” and about how Christianity “legitimizes and seals male power,” stuff that voters in Kentucky might find a bit… insane. Also, she lives in Tennessee. Democrats may be encouraging her to run, Jonathan Chait wrote this week, because she could raise a lot of money for the party, and they’re going to lose against McConnell no matter who faces him. (There are donors, apparently, who are like, Wow, Judd is running? Let me break out my checkbook!)The only chance Judd has to win, lies in the fact that some Republicans hate McConnell, too, because that dude sucks on an entirely nonideological level (see above). Tea Party groups have promised to run against him in the primaries, less out of disagreements with any specific policy (since he doesn’t have any policies), than out of a passionate dislike for the DC establishment that McConnell embodies. If they manage to knock him out in a primary, the Tea Party will likely nominate a kook in the mold of Christine O’Donnell or Sharron Angle, the 2014 Kentucky senate race will be hilariously entertaining, and we might be reading about Senator Judd in a couple years.But that won’t happen. All the stuff that makes McConnell so loathsome—his naked desire for power, his viciousness, his eagerness to bend the rules to his advantage—are also what make him a winner. Like an animal ideally adapted to its environment, McConnell fits into the system perfectly, which probably says something about the system. Unless something completely unexpected and wonderful happens, he’ll bury his Tea Party opposition and Judd under a wave of negativity, spend roughly a second sneering at them, then go back to stopping the federal government from functioning. His isn't a very helpful or pleasant path, but it is very American.@HCheadle
