You know I been Team Amy McGrath. From what little I know about the retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and, say, her vision re: foreign policy and national security (which minces no words where standing up to aggressive foreign powers is concerned, for instance), I think she would be a fine choice to unseat Mitch McConnell, the longtime senator from Kentucky and current Senate majority leader on Nov. 3.
Y’ know, waddle-waddle McConnell, the conservative Republican and professional billblock who’s worth close to $23 million. How is that even possible on a senator’s salary? I don’t care that his wife, Elaine Chao, is the Secretary Transportation (and more than likely also handsomely remunerated by the regime of one Donald “the Impeached” Trump – and who knows who else). The point is he is a public servant, one who has obviously enriched himself along the way – and he has been in the Senate since 1984 (mmm…I gotta read that book, already) – whilst, no less, opposing legislation that would have benefitted the entire country, I dunno, pre-pandemic…or anywhere along the last 20 years of gun violence gone a-white. Cough, cough. Awry.
McConnell has got to go. If there is anyone who embodies the most insidious worse of the United States of America patriarchy, well, that is Moscow Mitch. (Oops. Did I type that out loud?)
Now. What I like about America is that we have options here. Many options. What is chafing my ass about these parts nowadays? That I only recently learned that there is another contender of note in the senatorial race out in Kentucky.
Indeed, the Bluegrass State is having its primary election on June 23, next Tuesday, and this, less than a week prior, is the first I have heard about Charles Booker, a former director of Personnel and Administrative Services for the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife, who was elected in 2018 to the Kentucky State House of Representatives, becoming the youngest black state legislator in nearly a century. If it weren’t because of the endorsements of two 2020 presidential hopefuls, Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren, I might have found out about brother Booker too late to shine a light on this potential new path.
Booker grew up in the west end of Louisville, in one of the poorest ZIP codes in the state. His family knew hunger, and his parents, sometimes, had to ration his insulin. But he rose. He went to the University of Louisville, where he met student debt. He got married, and together with his wife is now raising two daughters. He is a legislator with literal skin in it, OK, and has championed gun reform, voting rights, labor laws, and much more than McConnell cares to these days.
He could not be more the antithesis of McConnell, and that’s precisely what truly will bring forth meaningful systemic change in this country.
So take a look at McGrath, but also know that Booker – a proponent of a Green New Deal for a Kentucky New Deal – is keen to get a seat at the table. And be sure of it: with McConnell, an oppressor, still in the Senate, pushing the delusional agenda of the conservative right-wing fringe in the historical South, we will never truly have equality or fairness in America (the Equality Act is among the many bills McConnell has willfully ignored and, lest you forgot, he stole a Supreme Court appointment from president Barack Obama).
Consider all your options this election season, America! Including the one that rids you of racists and senators who don’t give a single fuck about ya.
King of Cups 