Mitch Reaches the End
By 
Not quite the end, but it’s now official that he’ll be leaving the Senate:
Mitch McConnell announced on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday that he will not seek an eighth term in office next year.
The influential Kentucky Republican stepped down from party leadership last year after serving in that role longer than anyone in Senate history. Many assumed he would not run for office again after serious health issues in recent years, but he made it official in his floor speech.
McConnell said he was humbled by the trust Kentuckians put in him to serve in the Senate and how that was “the honor of a lifetime,” but added he will not seek this honor an eighth time.
“My current term in the Senate will be my last,” he said.
Thursday is McConnell’s 83rd birthday. His current term lasts through the end of 2026.
I have been told by people with experience that while McConnell can still manage periods of coherence (as with the 60 Minutes interview and the speeches about the worst Trump cabinet picks) his window of effectiveness is limited on a day-to-day basis.
About the man, what is there to say? Of all of the Republicans, indeed of all of the people, who could have stood up at some point and said “No” to the rise of Trump, McConnell is conspicuous in failure. If Mitch had approached impeachment different in 2021 I very much believe that Trump could have been convicted. McConnell was obviously, painfully aware of the toxicity of Trump, but until the very end he decided that it was more important to maintain the internal coherence of the Republican Party than to defend American democracy. There was never any doubt about how much he hated the man, and yet he repeatedly declined to do anything useful about it. A profile in courage, one might say.
As for his successors… the early candidates are Daniel Cameron (who lost to Andy Beshear in the 2023 gubernatorial election), Kelly Craft (who lost to Cameron in the primary), Thomas Massie (KY-4) and Andy Barr (KY-6). On the Democratic side there’s little that’s yet clear beyond the extraordinarily small chance that Beshear will throw his hat into the ring; losing a Senate election before running for President worked for Abraham Lincoln but it’s nevertheless not recommended. Barr moving up opens up a tiny glimmer of light that KY-6 might be flippable, but it’s a heavy lift as the GOP gerrymandered it after the very close 2018 Barr-McGrath race.