Goodbye, Mitch.

I’m a rabbi. I believe in atonement, especially the arduous kind where you really work at it, expose your vulnerabilities, and accept the consequences. It isn’t really supposed to be a deathbed performance, even though our tradition makes room for late-breaking developments. Just in case you’re nearing the end, I’d be glad to help you with the formula for a confession. And just in case, I keep it by my bedside. I said that I believe in real, midlife atonement, but I didn’t say that I’ve got my act together.

So what’s up with our friend Mitch McConnell? To the shouts and hosannahs of progressives everywhere, he just announced that he won’t run again. Let’s revel in the moment, even if it’s short-lived. He will likely be succeeded by a retrograde MAGA-man who makes us long for the good old days. But that is then. This is now. However fleeting the pleasure, it’s important to register it.

But I won’t forget how much misery he brought us. Refusing to consider a Supreme Court nominee almost a year before a national election is no one’s idea of national leadership. Strategizing to make Obama a one-term president by selling your immortal soul to the Devil is not what the Founders had in mind for this country. McConnell did both—and much more to boot—to the detriment of comity, fairness, and good government. The public display of his enfeebled mind and body (those long pauses at the microphone, those garbled utterances) seemed like an ironic display of the inner, corroded man.

But suddenly Mitch is auditioning McConnell 2.0. In the confirmation hearings now reaching their sorry climax, he voted against Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard. I get the opposition to Secretary Brain Worm. Mitch was apparently a polio patient in his earliest youth and Kennedy is an enemy of our national vaccine program. McConnell seems also to draw the line when it comes to wife abusers and national security moles, especially when they are on Putin’s payroll at the Kremlin. It didn’t seem to make a difference for any of these candidates, but the no votes add up to a kind of deathbed confession. Not exactly atonement, but not exactly not.

Then again, McConnell reminded us today that the Devil holds the leash. This very morning, Kash Patel squeaked by, boosted by a yes from the former Majority Leader. He will now direct the entity formerly known as the FBI, just as soon as he fires thousands of operatives who were involved somehow in the prosecution of Team Coup.

And so the story ends for Mitch McConnel. If the very worst thing about Trump/Sauron’s presidency is its bald-faced lies and strangulation of the truth, Mitch McConnel’s role should not be forgotten. Let it be remembered that in February of this year he voted yes for the appointment of an FBI director who believes that the attempted coup was not exactly that, but the gentle protest of a peace-loving citizenry mobilizing to protect the sancta of our civilization.

Goodbye, Mitch. You will not be forgotten.