President Clinton campaigns for Alison Grimes

OWENSBORO, Ky. – Former President Bill Clinton wowed a partisan crowd in Owensboro, telling more than 3,000 people that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell has taken the country down a path of partisan bickering and political infighting and should be tossed out of office.

"Do you want continued gridlock, fighting and big money buying your opinions and making you think less of everybody?" he asked the crowd.

Clinton and his wife, former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are trying to help Alison Lundergan Grimes upset McConnell, the Senate's minority leader, in the Nov. 4 election.

McConnell has spent the last 15 months trying to tie Grimes to President Barack Obama, who has a 30 percent favorability rating in Kentucky. Grimes has refused to confirm that she even voted for Obama and instead saying that she is a "Clinton Democrat."

To be sure, Grimes' father, Jerry Lundergan, is Clinton's closest friend in Kentucky, and he chaired Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign in the state.

This was Bill Clinton's third trip to Kentucky for Grimes, and it comes as Hillary Clinton — who attended a Louisville rally for Grimes last week — appears poised to run for the presidency in 2016.

The former president told the crowd not to be tricked by McConnell into casting a protest vote against Obama, who will only be in office for two more years, by rewarding the senator with a six-year term.

"This is his message as near as I can tell: 'You might want to vote me out after 30 years and not much happening for you but this is your last chance to vote against the president ... and you've got to take it,' " Clinton said.

Grimes' success may hinge on whether she can convince voters she is more like Clinton than Obama.

Clinton is the last Democrat to carry Kentucky in a statewide federal election, having won the state in 1992 and 1996, and he is still viewed favorably by 53 percent of Kentucky voters, according to a recent Bluegrass Poll.

While Grimes was traveling in Western Kentucky with Clinton for rallies in Owensboro and Paducah, McConnell was in the midst of a three-day bus tour through Eastern Kentucky.

During his 22-minute speech, Clinton also reminded people of the successes of his time in office.

"You just remember what it was like in those eight years we all grew together," he said of his two terms as president, when the nation created some 23 million jobs and made bipartisan agreements to reform welfare and balance the federal budget.

And, he noted, that for most of his time in the White House, former Sen. Wendell Ford, of Owensboro, was there with him, ready to cross party lines when necessary. Ford, 90 and suffering from lung cancer, attended the rally.

"He never once hesitated to work with Republicans and Democrats in Washington to get something done," Clinton said. "You've got to understand that this idea that we should just put up these big walls and fight and keep everyone all torn up and upset has not always been the way your national government worked."

Clinton reminded the crowd that McConnell told billionaires in California earlier this year that "the worst day of my political life" was when the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill in 2002.

"How can that be the worst day of your life, even if you thought it was a bad idea?" Clinton asked. "That was worse than 9/11? That was worse than the day we had the biggest crash since the Great Depression? That was worse than when he lost the 30,000 jobs in coal the eight years of ... the Bush presidency?"

Moments after he began speaking, a woman to his right yelled, "We love you, Bill." He responded, "I love you too."

That was the feeling in the room where people gushed over the former president.

"I loved it, I enjoyed the whole thing," said John Armstrong, of Owensboro, who said he's going to volunteer for Grimes and that Clinton drove home the need to do that.

Grimes, in her speech, almost dared Obama to take regulatory action that would impact jobs in Kentucky's coal fields and criticized McConnell for efforts to block initiatives from raising the minimum wage to equalizing pay for women.

And she told her supporters that they can power her to victory.

"Fight like you've never fought before," she said. "If you do, you will get this Kentucky filly to the winner circle and we will put Mitch McConnell out to pasture."

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.