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LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The fierce fight to win Kentucky's Senate seat carries with it some lingering intrigue: the complicated relationship between a potential future president and a potential future majority leader.

In one corner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is running his campaign squarely against President Obama -- whose favorability remains below 30 percent here -- instead of his youthful, energetic challenger, Kentucky secretary of state Alison Lundergan Grimes (D). In the other corner is the Grimes campaign, which has practically ignored Obama's existence -- as a stand-in for the actual nominee used the Clinton family as the de facto challenger to McConnell.

That dynamic reached a crescendo Saturday afternoon inside a packed theater on Transylvania University's campus here, when former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton delivered a 22-minute rallying cry for the 35-year-old challenger -- the seventh time she or former president Bill Clinton have appeared in Kentucky for Grimes.

Clinton accused Republicans of running a campaign of "fear," suggesting McConnell's campaign had been endlessly negative in an attempt to smear the challenger. McConnell aides "just hope that enough of it sticks," she said.

But not once did she ever mention the Senate minority leader by name.

"If Alison's opponent wanted to run against the president, he had the chance in 2012," Clinton said, to cheers from more than 1,200 Democrats packed inside the event.

It was a delicate bit of diplomacy for Clinton, honed both in her four years at Foggy Bottom and her eight years serving alongside McConnell in the Senate. Local observers say that former president Bill Clinton has no hesitation in invoking McConnell by name -- but Hillary Clinton seems to avoid it.

This election, it's all about which party will control the Senate. PostTV visited four battleground states to ask voters there about the issues driving them to the ballot box for the midterms. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)

It's likely, at least in part, senatorial courtesy -- but also it could help smooth relations between the two should Hillary Clinton run for, and win, the presidency in 2016. Polls show McConnell with a small-but-steady lead, and Republicans are very close to securing the six seats necessary to win the Senate majority in Tuesday's elections.

That would make McConnell the majority leader, a post he might still hold if and when Clinton is sworn in as president in January 2017. The Republicans will face a difficult electoral map for the Senate in 2016, so GOP strategists are hoping for a big sweep that will provide a cushion for seats they could lose two years from now and maintain the majority.

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Hillary Clinton and Mitch McConnell: Its complicated