Obama is a factor in this race only because Senator McConnell and his billionaire buddies have dedicated an ungodly amount of money defaming the President from the moment he was elected. Within 3 months of the President's first inauguration, the phrase "Obama's war on coal" was plastered on practically every newspaper headline in the state. This was a part of Sen. McConnell's pledge to keep President Obama to just the one term. Not too surprisingly, McConnell failed in this effort.

But he has managed to make the President a pariah because mighty few of the state's newspapers who carried his headline proclaiming a "war on  coal" ever looked into the money being used to constantly smear Obama.  But the truth is, the President has done considerably more to help the state in his 6 years than McConnell has in 30.
 
There is the American Recovery and Reinvest Act (ARRA) that turned an untold amount of  money loose in this state. In Pikeville alone, there are two very large construction projects this money made possible: the vast additions to the Pikeville Medical Center got $40 million; and the ironically named Coal Building that now houses the University of Pikeville College of Osteopathic Medicine got $20 million. It got the name Coal Building, even though the coal industry never went a foot out of its way to help build it. And these projects are but the tip of the iceberg.

Meanwhile, twice McConnell, who voted against the ARRA, lead the effort against healthcare reform without once offering any alternatives; in 1994 and again in 2009. We can conclude that McConnell did this not because he has anything in particular against gov't sponsored healthcare, but to keep his billionaire buddies happy. After all, he's had the very best healthcare the federal gov't can provide for thirty years, and at no time has he protested or declined to take part in it.

And Sen. McConnell has voted against raising the minimum wage at every opportunity he had, while never missing a chance to vote for a raise for himself.

And the Senator has blocked many bills meant to help the veterans of the wars he supported, even the Iraq war, and we know that we were lied to, to get that $3-5 trillion travesty off the ground. But when he voted against a bill by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders meant to fund the Veterans Administration to the tune of some $21 billion, he said did so because there was no way to pay for it.

What he meant was, he wasn't about to raise taxes on those corporations that profited in the tens of billions of dollars from the Iraq war while the veterans he tried to deny benefits to, fought and died or were injured severely in that war.

McConnell seems to not really want anything from the power he seeks; he just seems to lust after it. And now he holds out the promise he can become the Senate Majority Leader if he's re-elected and the voters from across the nation buy the same bull he's been putting out his entire senatorial career and give the Grand Old Tea Party a majority in that chamber.

But let us remember the last time McConnell was a part of the  majority,  how he help usher in conditions that lead directly to the Great Recession by voting for every spurious bill presented by Bush43 that took the feds from a $200 billion plus surplus to a $1 trillion plus deficit.

With that in mind, I think the voters would be well-served if they realized how little McConnell has ever done for the state's citizens and how much he's done for his billionaire buddies and for himself.