Senator Mitch McConnell is not well. Without going too deep into an armchair diagnosis of his recent spate of freezes and falls, it shouldnāt be controversial to say that an 81-year-old man who mysteriously stops talking and canāt start up again is likely suffering from some kind of significant health issue.
If he were a woman, the calls for him to retire would be deafening. If he were a Democrat, the calls would be coming from within his own party. If he were Joe Biden, The New York Times would run a three-part exposĆ© on his nap times while CNN ran a ā25th Amendment Trackerā keeping tabs on which cabinet officials had publicly agreed to remove him from power. But McConnell is a Republican man, which means nobody is going to pressure him into getting out of the way so somebody else can frost the glass of representative democracy.
McConnell, of course, shows no sign of being willing to retire. In private calls, he has allegedly assured Republicans that he is āfine,ā and I guess everybody is supposed to take his word for it. The most simple reason for his intransigence is the pride that seems to afflict every octogenarian politician in this broken republic. For reasons I hope to live long enough to discover, old politicians seem to think they are indispensable and will continue to run for office and cling to power until the great Voter in the Sky escorts them to a farm upstate. McConnell may simply be doing what others in his generational cohort do: refuse to cede the floor to the future.
But that explanation risks treating McConnell as a normal person, and McConnell is far from normal. He is perhaps the most successful congressional operator since Henry Clay and a man who wouldnāt turn on a light switch unless it somehow helped Republicans win political power. Whether or not McConnell wants to retire is irrelevant; from his perspective, he probably canāt. Thatās because his home state of Kentucky has a Democratic governor, and a law McConnell helped engineer to limit that governorās choices on McConnellās replacement is probably unconstitutional.
In 2019, Kentucky shocked the country by electing Andy Beshear, a Democrat, as its governor (yada, yada, all politics is local). This year, Beshear is up for reelection, and heās running against McConnell ally Daniel Cameron, who was last seen refusing to indict the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor. Beshear leads Cameron by eight points, according to recent polling data.
Kentucky is one of 46 states that allow their governor to fill US Senate vacancies until a special election can be held and the voters can determine who will finish the senatorial term. (North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin are the only states that donāt allow these kinds of temporary gubernatorial appointments but instead go straight to special elections.) This means that if McConnell retires while Beshear is in office (which might be for a long time yet), Beshear gets to fill his seat temporarily.
But thereās a catch. In 2021, at the urging of McConnell, Kentucky became the 11th state to limit the governorās choices for a replacement senator. The Kentucky law requires the governor to pick a senator from the same party as the retiring senator, and requires the governor to pick from a list of three candidates provided by the executive committee of the departing senatorās political party. The Kentucky legislature passed the law over Beshearās veto.
If that scheme sounds odd to you, it should, because it almost certainly violates the 17th Amendment of the Constitution. The 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, provided for the direct election of senators by popular vote. The amendment also empowers the āexecutive authority of the stateāāwhich means the governorāto fill Senate vacancies, as long as the legislature gives them authority to do so before a special election is held. Before the change, senators were chosen directly by state legislatures, which meant that party bosses were able to hand out Senate appointments as if they were a patronage position.
Kentuckyās replacement law is exactly the kind of thing the 17th Amendment was meant to stop. In his veto statement, Beshear explained the constitutional problems with the law as well as I can. The governor wrote: āThe Seventeenth Amendment does not authorize legislatures to direct how the Governor makes an appointment to fill vacancies, and the legislature may not impose an additional qualification on who the Governor may appoint beyond the qualifications set for a United States Senator set forth in the Constitution.ā
If McConnell retires, the most likely thing for Beshear to do would be to appoint whomever he wants, let the Kentucky legislature sue him, and take the case to the Supreme Court. Despite Republican control of the court, I think Kentuckyās law is likely to lose. Even conservative legal commentators have noted the potential constitutional weakness of the Kentucky replacement scheme.
Still, even if Kentuckyās legislature manages to overcome the 17th Amendment, there is yet another wrinkle: Who is going to tell Beshearās replacement senator to go home? Remember, as of now, Democrats still control the Senate. Beshear would name a replacement; that replacement would present his credentials to the Democratic-controlled Senate; and thatās just about all it takes to make a new incumbent a senator. By the time the appeals made it to the Supreme Court, Kentucky would be at or near the special election anyway.
McConnell, of all people, understands how raw political power works, and he surely understands that Democrats have it right now, regardless of Kentuckyās constitutionally questionable law. Even if McConnellās Senate seat flips to a Democrat for only a few months, those are a few months during which the Democratic majority would be freed from the clutches of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. A motivated party could push through a lot of federal judges in a few months.
Whether McConnell retires āgracefullyā or orders his staff to Weekend at Bernieās him until 2026 probably depends on whether Beshear wins reelection in Kentucky. McConnell may be unwell, but I doubt heās forgotten āhow to do politics.ā Ironically, McConnellās entire accursed career has probably done the most work to create the Senate conditions that require him to hang on until the bitter end. The Senate that McConnell created is one devoid of grace: Itās now just a raw exercise in obstruction, where even human frailty is exploited for partisan gain. Somewhere, I bet Ted Kennedy (whose death McConnell exploited to deny the inclusion of a public option in the Affordable Care Act) is watching McConnellās travails with great interest.
McConnellās legacy is partisanship, whatever the costs. That seething commitment to do only what is in the best interests of the Republican Party means that right now, McConnell is locked into his role as another Republican vote, at the cost of his dignity and health.
I canāt think of another Congressperson more deserving of publically convulsing and pissing himself live on C-SPAN for posterity.
He didnāt hurt some people here or there. Heās made hurting the little guy to make people like himself richER his lifeās mission, and unlike some of his knuckle dragging Republican compatriots too stupid not to get in their own ways, credit where itās due, Mitch was adept at accomplishing his malice.
Please donāt retire with any dignity, Mitch, even resigning on your own terms and walking out on your own two feet. You donāt deserve that.
He knows that as soon as he retires, he dies. Heāll probably die in office, but not as quickly as he would if he stepped down now.
He canāt die now. He has so many more lives to destroy.
Thatās just how an energy vampire operates.
Imo the scariest and saddest thing about all this is that these kinds of politicians are so political that they could have advanced dementia but due to how much of their life is politics, politics would probably be one of the last places it shows. Politics is their life, their motivation for getting up in the morning, itās probably all they talk about with friends and family, etc.
Theyāll probably forget their friends and family before forgetting what law theyāre trying to enact or how much they hate the other team.
Itās when he loses signal from THE TRANSMITTER
Heās being hailed by the Lizard People Mothership
Easy solution. Next time he resets, push him into a closet.
Next time he resets
Now Iām imagining heās watching the red Terminator HUD scroll across every time he reboots.
āI need your clothes, your boots, your motorcycleā¦ but especially your pants.ā
Or the robocop one with redacted protocols
TooManyTermsinator
But where will Lindsay Graham go?
Hopefully off a high cliff at about 90mph. And thatās Lady G to you pal. lol.
Side bar that I found kind of interesting. Politico wrote about how senators in particular will not call for each other to resign, even members of the other party. With Fienstein, Republican senators were mum. With McConnell, Dem senators were the same. Politico had a bunch of other examples of ailing senators wandering around the building and senators of both parties just shrugging, but I donāt remember them. The reason is they generally are all old, or expect to still be serving when their old, and they all share a sense of āthere but the grace of god goes I.ā Just a neat little anecdote I read.
You could take it negatively and critize the Senate for having so many old people, and thereās some validity to that for sure. Personally Iām more in the age is just a number camp, and Iāll point to congressman Don Beyer who is 72 years old and pursuing a masterās degree in machine learning so he can better help congres regulate AI. Iām also not going to tell 82 year old Bernie Sanders to get off the picket line. Being old and being out of touch are correlated (highly even), but itās not necessarily causation. As for health concerns, Iāve had mine own and Iād err on the side of letting people decide for themselves when they are too gone to be effective. At least until it becomes a problem. Imo itās a problem for Feinstien.
Anyway, the other way to take the acedote is that at least there is still a chamber of Congress with some decorum and respect for the people they work with. Itās refreshing compared to the shit throwing freedom caucus monkeys running the house.
I understand why being that old in Congress is a problem for exactly the reasons youāve outlined. I also understand that the elderly, for better or worse, are a voting demographic in America, and deserve representation in Congress from people who understand their issues.
(I feel the same way about convictsā¦ especially in America where ex cons are a significant part of the population)
Itās ok for McConnell to freeze up like an old computer, or for tRump to talk like a mentally deranged person - but Biden is too old
Dude, this is a straw man youāre arguing against. The truth is the lot of them are past it.
Yeah, Biden fell off his bike once.
Iām sure he did, back in the 40ās.
Guess you donāt keep up with the news.
The more I read about that man, the less I feel for him.
Im not aware of anyone who feels anything about McConnell other than contempt.
Some lesser demons are envious.
The un-feeling is mutual, iām pretty sure.
Weāre gonna watch this cunt drop dead live on C-SPAN.
got the skeet blanket ready
Cum socks are a GO
So is this guyās 5g antennae bugging out or is it just a rash of TIAs as he slips downwards?
Why did I start reading that whole expo, itās just painful to learn how terrible this person is. RIH Mitch (Rot in Hell)
Someone must have serious shit on this dude, can you imagine living your last days shitting your pants and freezing up instead of enjoying yourself before you die
Yeah this the part I donāt get. The last thing I wanna be doing in my 80s is having to deal with the chucklefucks like Cruz, Hawley, or Graham or any of the bullshit of Trump. I wanna be fishing or making furniture.
Yes but youāre clearly not a sadistic, Machiavellian asshole. He gets off on what he does.
I donāt think heās constitutionally capable of ājoyā.
What does this even mean?
i donāt like putting words in othersā mouths, but if i had to guess, or if it were my comment, my sentiment would be thereās nothing that would be constitutionally permitted that would cause or allow him to feel joy. the only way he feels joy is if itās something to the determent of the american public and their consitution.
but iām not speaking for winterayars, they can speak for themselves if they wish to clarify.
Theyāve done nothing but enjoy their time. Getting taken out to fancy dinners/events, all paid for by their wealthy millionaire/billionaire masters. Yacht rides, fishing trips, probably other material things Iām sure. Thatās more than Iāve had in my life, and theyāve lived it for at least 20-30 years. The job theyāre in is how theyāve lived that luxurious bought out life. Fuck āem I say.
Theyāve done nothing but enjoy their time. Getting taken out to fancy dinners/events, all paid for by their wealthy millionaire/billionaire masters. Yacht rides, fishing trips, probably other material things Iām sure. Thatās more than Iāve had in my life, and theyāve lived it for at least 20-30 years. The job theyāre in is how theyāve lived that luxurious bought out life. Fuck āem I say.
deleted by creator
Yes, same take but with no need to mention her having dedicated her life to destroy the legitimacy of the Senate and the Judicial branch. Because she didnāt do that, McConnell did, and continues to do so. Bottom line, The Nation says she needs to resign, just like McConnell needs to.
Select quotes:
āTwo-thirds of Californians tellĀ pollstersĀ they think that Feinstein is unfit to stay as their senator. A majority of Democratic votersĀ want her to resign. (I suspect, in their defense, that those who answer that theyĀ donātĀ want her to resign simply havenāt been reading the news about her state of acute unwellness.) Yet resign she wonātā¦ā
āā¦because of Feinsteinās unfathomable stubbornness, for all intents and purposes California is down to only one fully functioning senator.ā
āI agree with GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley on almost nothing of political substance. But sheās not wrong when she says that aged political leaders ought to face regularĀ mental competency tests, in the same way asĀ elderly driversĀ have to regularly retake parts of the driving test to weed out those who have become too impaired to safely navigate the roadways. If there were such a competency test for politicians, Californians would almost certainly be getting ready, right about now, to welcome a replacement for their senior senator.ā