Mitch McConnell just tried to pick a fight with President Obama – and he’s about to regret it
When President Obama said on a conference call over the weekend that Donald Trump’s coronavirus response was a “chaotic disaster,” and it leaked to the media, it was surely by design. Obama was baiting Donald Trump into picking a fight with him, and Trump quickly took the bait, posting more than a hundred obsessive tweets about him.
There’s a reason why this fight can’t possibly work in Trump’s favor: he’s historically unpopular, and Obama is historically popular. Those two things aren’t going to change, so Trump is only harming himself by framing the 2020 election as Trump vs Obama. Trump is pretty bad at this kind of thing, and easily baited. But we’re a bit surprised that Mitch McConnell, who is evil but savvy, is also taking the bait.
According to CNN, Mitch McConnell thinks that it was “classless” of President Obama to privately criticize Donald Trump, and that Obama “should have kept his mouth shut” instead. Keep in mind that McConnell is up for reelection in November, and he’s up against the most viable Democratic challenger he’s faced in his career. McConnell’s approval rating is vey low, and again, Obama’s is very high.
Mitch McConnell may be banking on the notion that he can run against Obama in Kentucky, but keep in mind that Donald Trump has made the GOP so toxically unpopular, Kentucky now has a Democratic Governor. Moreover, the more McConnell attacks Obama, the more the nation is going to get behind Amy McGrath’s Senate campaign against McConnell. Looks like McConnell just stepped in it, as people tend to do when they’re up against a wall.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report