CALLED IT

Claire McCaskill writes off outstate Missouri.

A video recording has emerged of Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill telling supporters that she doesn’t care about losing votes in the state’s “bootheel,” the southeastern most tip of the state that is rural and solidly conservative.

Republican challenger Josh Hawley featured the video recording in a new TV ad that hit the airwaves Thursday, using Ms. McCaskill’s own words to hammer home his message that the two-term senator has betrayed Missouri’s farmers, ranchers and rural residents.

“If we do our job in St. Louis County, you know, I can give up a few votes in the bootheel,” Ms. McCaskill says in the video recording, apparently captured on a cellphone as she gave a pep talk to campaign volunteers.

As Republicans are always accused of doing at all times and for all reasons, Josh Hawley immediately pounced on McCaskill's remarks.

Still, the voice-over announcer in the ad spells out the implication of the incumbent senator’s pep talk: “No wonder Claire McCaskill votes against your gun rights, against agriculture and against conservative judges like Brett Kavanaugh.”

The announcer adds, “Claire McCaskill has given up on you.”

At a campaign stop Wednesday at a farm in southwest Missouri, Mr. Hawley told a small gathering of farmers that his opponent was never on their side, not on environmental regulations, not on trade and not on confirming Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

“It’s a pattern for her,” he said, standing on a flatbed trailer in a barn. “It’s a pattern with her on agriculture too.”

I guess that was why Claire didn't want cameras at her recent KC town hall meeting.

Michael Kinsley once famously remarked that a "gaffe" is what occurs when a politician accidentally tells the truth.  And make no mistake, this was definitely a major gaffe.

Don't get me wrong.  Claire knows and believes this and every Missourian knows that she knows and believes this.  I mean, if I figured all this out, other Pukes can too.

But one of the keys to winning any election is to excite your own followers while going out of your way not to excite the other guy's.  Don't motivate his people to make it a point to go to the polls.  As Thumper once put it, "If you can't say sumthin' nice, don't say nuthin' at all."

Will outstate MO vote against you?  Yes.  So be photographed listening to a Show-Me State farmer while nodding seriously, utter inanities like "farmers are the backbone of Missouri," win reelection, return to Washington and keep on voting the way Chuck Schumer tells you to.

In six years, the rubes will forget all about it.  But whatever you do, don't ever publicly remind outstate Missourians what all Show-Me Democrats think but are smart enough never to say.

For that way lies the private sector.  Or a lobbying gig.