McConnell's Been Missing a Month. Beshear Has Two Weeks.
August 3 is the date Kentucky's vacancy law slams shut. What Beshear does before then decides whether Kentucky keeps its voice in the Senate.
by Cliff Schecter
Mitch McConnell has been missing for thirty-six days.
Not missing in the manner his conscience has been on hiatus since roughly 1984—we stopped canvassing the neighborhood looking for that a long arse time ago. No, McConnell inside that turtle shell of a body that should contain an essence, is literally missing.
The senior senator from Kentucky—the lout who turned minority rule into performance art, who stole one Supreme Court seat from President Obama and jammed another through after millions of ballots had already been cast the next presidential election. Who stood on the Senate floor and told us Donald Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for January 6th—and then voted to acquit him, because Mitch’s outrage has always been decorative, like his marriage.
McConnell fell at his Washington home on June 14. Knocked his noggin. Was briefly unconscious. Got pneumonia after that. Allegedly.
And then? Nothing. For nearly a month, the longest-serving Senate party leader in American history and first corporation to prance around in a human suit just…wasn’t.
No video. No press avail. No colleague to say they’d had a real call. Though CNN’s resident pissant, Scott Jennings, kept assuring anyone with a camera that Mitch was just dandy. But you know the drill by now. If Scott’s lips are moving, he’s lying.
Then, on July 12—the same day Graham was buried in this very newsletter—McConnell’s office finally puked up a proof-of-life photo: a written statement, and newspaper in hand like he was a hostage in a Russell Crowe flick. McConnell (assuming he has a pulse) supposedly intends to finish his term, which ends in January. Mitch (or the ventriloquist dummy playing the role) claims men of his generation are hesitant to discuss vulnerability. (Men of his generation also used to look back on a long career infused with job stability, affordable healthcare and benefits if they fell unceremoniously in their house—Mitch destroyed that).
Meanwhile—and this is crucial to our plot—Lindsey Graham died, and South Carolina almost had a replacement Republican seated by sundown. Henry McMaster appointed a warm body (in this case, Lindsey’s sister). The warm body flies to Washington. There’s a special primary already on the calendar for August 11th. Done.
That’s how it works almost everywhere in America.
That’s how it’s supposed to work in America.
That’s how it doesn’t work in Kentucky, because of Mitch fucking McConnell. Democracy’s pestilence.
If McConnell’s seat comes open, Kentucky gets nothing. An empty chair. For months. On purpose. We’ll get to why.
Which brings us to the man with the biggest megaphone in the Commonwealth: Governor Andy Beshear. Two-time statewide winner in a state Trump carried by 30%. The party’s proof that decency still polls. And a man who’s running for president whether he’s said so yet or not.
On July 8, Beshear sent McConnell a letter.
A Letter Is Not a Plan
It was a good letter! Firm, respectful, right: Kentuckians deserve to know whether they have a functioning Senator who can do the job. When the proof-of-life photo surfaced four days later, Beshear said it was “a step in the right direction.”
Governor. Andy. Buddy. A letter is not a plan. We’ve been through this with Congress. Every time Trump bites another chunk outta the Constitution like it’s the hamberders he ordered for winning sports teams that decline to show up at the White House. Then a Schumerian letter arrives via courier.
Nothing. Happens.
“A step in the right direction” is what you say when there is no direction.
Now, a few things before the well-actually caucus shoots angry emails my way: I very much like Andy Beshear. He’s been at the top of my list for potential 2028 candidates, a man with conviction and political talent, who won reelection by 5% in a state more MAGA than The Epstein Files. Though I add one caveat: I’m old enough to know what I don’t know. Which is who’ll comprise the three or four—maybe half dozen—shiny new objects to score surprise victories—or win much bigger than expected—and come outta 2026 with a head full of steam.
But back to Gov. Beshear.
I know what Beshear can’t do, and so does he. He cannot declare McConnell incapacitated. Nobody can. There is no provision for it in federal law, Kentucky law, or the collective statutes of humankind to remove a senator who’s stopped functioning but won’t leave. Somehow the Magna Carta—or in this case, U.S. Constitution—didn’t think that one up in a country still beset by malaria with an average lifespan of 35-40 years in 1787.
That’s by design—the Senate is an institution built by and for men who intend to die at their desks. Carter Glass of Virginia was too sick to do his job for about four years in the 1940s, while chairing the Appropriations Committee. South Dakota’s Karl Mundt had a stroke in 1969, and held his seat until 1973.
Hell, I’m not sure we can technically still call Chuck Grassley a living creature, and he’s been in the U.S. Senate long enough to have voted against Martin Luther King Day. (No, I’m not kidding. About the MLK Day). Even more firightning? Because of another ridiculous flaw in our system—Grassley’s third in the line of succession to the presidency, which we award by tenure, not popularity or sentience.
But I digress.
The Senate’s response both times was “yeah, who cares.” As I was growing up working in politics, both Senators Strom Thurmond (R-SC) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) were regularly rolled onto the Senate floor for votes long past when they had any idea where they were or what they were doing.
So no—Beshear cannot conjure a vacancy, and any pundit screaming that he “just appoint someone” this afternoon is selling you outrage lacking a legal basis.
But here’s what those howling at the moon aren’t discussing, and should be: a list of things Beshear can do—now, this week, legally and loudly—is long.
And he hasn’t done any of them.
The Vacancy Machine They Built
First, understand the trap Kentucky Republican legislators built, because it is a masterpiece of cynicism. In 2024, the GOP supermajority in Frankfort passed House Bill 622, stripping the governor—specifically this Democratic governor; let’s not waste our time pretending otherwise—of his power to appoint an interim senator. Then passed it over Beshear’s veto, naturally. And nobody in Frankfort’s even shy about the rest: the moment a Republican re-occupies the governor’s mansion to a streaming performance of Ride of the Valkyries, watch that appointment power take out it’s GPS and find a way back to the governor like a cat that heard the can opener for the chunky tuna.
Under their bs law, a Senate vacancy can only be filled via special election, which needs roughly 63 days to prepare. Which produces an equation everyone in Frankfort can do, but nobody in Frankfort will say out loud: if McConnell’s seat comes open on or after August 3—two weeks from now—no special election can happen before the election in November. The seat would sit empty until January. Kentucky—4.5 million people, Fort Knox to Fort Campbell, flood counties still waiting on recovery money, some of my favorite bars in Covington—would have half a damn voice in the U.S. Senate through a government-shutdown fight.
They looked at that particular outcome and wrote it down. Then made it law. Kentucky Republicans decided they’d rather their Commonwealth have one senator than risk a demon-crat signing the paperwork for a second. That would be frightening!
A tribute to the wrong stuff that makes up the modern GOP.
When Lindsey died, I told you Republicans were playing Weekend at Bernie’s with this seat—propping up the calendar, not the man—because they’d rather take their chances on November’s ballot than face a special election in their worst political environment of my lifetime. That’s all still true. But there’s a plot point they haven’t thought through. We’re getting there.
And the punch line? Kentucky’s own constitution—Section 152—says the governor fills vacancies for statewide office. Whether a statute can override it hasn’t been tested in any courtroom, ever. But you can bet your arse Republicans would test it in a heartbeat.
Beshear has called HB 622 unconstitutional. He has threatened—there’s that word again—to challenge it.
So here is what doing it looks like. Five moves. One press conference. No sternly-worded letters in sight.
They’re betting Beshear won’t do any of it—and betting harder that you’ll never hear what “it” even is. Below the line: the binder, the pledge, the forgotten 1972 precedent, and the one date on the calendar that turns their own law into a bear trap on their own leg. Prove them wrong twice.
Cliff’s Note: Paid Subscribers Keep Reading—Because What Beshear Should Do Friday Isn’t Readily Apparent Unless You Know Where to Look. And I Know Where to Look
