A Former Convict Just Released This Year’s Most Powerful Political Ad
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Congressional midterms are usually a rather boring and predictable affair. The Democrats run a bunch of veterans and small business owners in a failed attempt to win over moderate Republicans, and the Republicans run a bunch of racist sheriffs and large business owners because fuck you. Former convict and coal baron Don Blankenship apparently didn’t get this memo, because he just released what is potentially the most electric political ad of all time.
For those who have “better things to do” than obsessively follow primaries for the 2018 midterms, Don Blankenship is one of three candidates for the Republican Senate nomination in West Virginia, running for the chance to take on incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin. For Democrats, this is one of the most vulnerable Senate seats they hold, as Manchin is a Democrat serving in a state that Trump won by 42%.
Blankenship is a former coal executive who is best known for going to prison in connection with a 2010 explosion that killed 29 West Virginia miners. Now that he is fresh out of jail and living the high life out on parole, he has decided to run for Senate on a platform mostly centered around making Mitch McConnell’s life miserable. This situation has worried national Republicans — who are already getting déjà vu from last year’s special election in Alabama — who are petrified that Blankenship will be able to win the nomination by spending his personal wealth, leaving the party with a flawed and unelectable candidate in the general election.
In response to all of the haters and doubters, Blankenship has released what is probably the most incredible political ad ever created.
What in the world did I just watch pic.twitter.com/4eudpGAxp0
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) May 3, 2018
Blankenship opens up strong with some very outdated racial slurs, accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of creating millions of jobs for “China people” and taking millions of dollars from his “China family.” He goes on to call out McConnell as a “swamp captain” whose “swamp people” have “childishly” called Blankenship “despicable and mentally ill.” He closes out with a promise that he will “ditch cocaine Mitch.”
There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s start at the beginning. The “china family” comment is a reference to McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, who is currently serving as the Secretary of Transportation and was born in Taiwan. Blankenship has also culturally appropriated one of President Trump’s favorite phrases by trying to brand McConnell as a creature of the swamp.
Blankenship has consistently tried to paint himself as the most strident ally of the President’s agenda in his primary, but the President has not returned the love. Trump recently appeared in West Virginia besides the other two GOP candidates in the race, making no mention of Blankenship, which was widely seen as an implicit rejection of the comically evil businessman and parolee’s campaign.
The most peculiar line of the ad is that McConnell’s allies have “childishly” derided Blankenship as despicable and mentally ill. Not falsely, not libelously, not wrongly — childishly. Blankenship is self-aware if nothing else. For good measure, he adds another honorific to McConnell’s laundry list of titles by dubbing him “Cocaine Mitch,” which is probably the coolest thing that has ever been said about Mitch McConnell.
To reiterate, Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader of the Republican Party — which Blankenship belongs to and is running as a part of — and is from Kentucky. Lots of insurgent Republican campaigns have been run on cutting taxes, smaller government, or being more racist. Few have been primarily centered around the fact that a Senator in a neighboring state likes Asian women. On May 8th, we’ll all find out exactly how effective this strategy can be.