Mitch McConnell gets photobombed at voting booth. Can we call it thumbgate?

As the Senate minority leader voted this morning, he got a thumbs down from a Kentucky voter a couple of booths down.

|
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
This Kentucky voter was not quite so opportunistic about sharing the limelight with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky at Bellarmine University in Louisville.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky got photobombed when he voted this morning.

It happened like this: the current Senate minority leader walked into his polling place at Bellarmine University in Louisville, which is not a conservative redoubt (Bellarmine has a good lacrosse team though, FWIW.) Security aides closed ranks to prevent photographers from getting too close, attracting the attention of fellow voters.

One guy a couple of booths down stuck his head up and sensed an opportunity. As the photogs snapped away he gave a thumbs-down sign, which shows up pretty well in the background of a couple of lucky shots. As many analysts noted, it seems pretty clear this guy’s vote canceled out Senator McConnell’s.

The campaign of McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, quickly turned the viral photo into a campaign tweet, with an arrow pointing to the photobomber and a caption saying, “Stand with this guy.”

They took it down later in the day, perhaps due to complaints from the Louisville Courier Journal that they’d appropriated the paper’s photo of the incident without permission. But you can still see it on the Politwoops site of deleted politicians' tweets.

What larger messages can we attempt to draw from this via over-interpretation as we await real voting results? 

First, advance work is an important and thankless job. Which hapless aide let that situation develop anyway?

Second, photobomb guy is likely to go to bed disappointed. The data journalism site 538 says McConnell has a 98 percent chance of winning reelection, and a 76 percent chance of being majority leader when the next Congress convenes.

Which brings us to our last point: McConnell is unlikely to care about this in the slightest tomorrow morning. He’ll be too busy thinking about how he’s going to decorate his big new office and how he’s going to run the Senate for the next two years, at least.

Or in the much less-probable circumstance of Democrats keeping the Senate, he’ll have much bigger problems on his hands.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Mitch McConnell gets photobombed at voting booth. Can we call it thumbgate?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/Senate/2014/1104/Mitch-McConnell-gets-photobombed-at-voting-booth.-Can-we-call-it-thumbgate
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe