Where's Mitch?

Senator Mitch McConnell's impending demise highlights the challenges of confronting the false dichotomy of the United States' two-party system.

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Although the tenor of anti-establishment rhetoric has transcended from the fringes of the public discourse on American politics into its mainstream, the era defined by that shift has yet to materialize in any meaningful change in the system defining how the U.S. government operates. While the ascent of Donald J. Trump to the United States presidency in 2016 had initially been envisioned as the point of demarcation marking the triumph of populism in U.S. politics, that dream turned into a nightmare following a first term that supporters viewed as sabotaged by America’s political and social elite. Not yet halfway into Trump’s second term, the narrative surrounding that phantasmagoria has become even more haunting, as longtime supporters of the 45th and now 47th President of the United States have begun to feel they were sold a false bill of goods. Instead of reining in the establishment of Permanent Washington, which Trump campaigned on defeating, the president has increasingly become assimilated by that political class.

Perhaps no better example of the Washington establishment that Trump has failed to decapitate exists than Kentucky senior citizen — err, senior senator — Mitch McConnell. McConnell, who has represented the Bluegrass State in the U.S. Senate for over forty years since 1985, is the utter embodiment of the political class Trump demonized for holding America hostage from Capitol Hill. While McConnell has cemented a political legacy that saw him become the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history by serving in that capacity for the Republican Party from 2007 until 2025, his legacy has become more defined by him being viewed as the personification of a broken political system than any accolades or honors that have been bestowed upon him since his tenure in the Senate began. The unclenching lust for power that has come to define the Washington establishment, of which McConnell is a figurehead, is succinctly illustrated by his unwillingness to relent from his position of power, seemingly leaving only death to take it from him. That characterization comes as no hyperbole as the forty-something-year tenured senator continues to refuse to abdicate from his office despite being hospitalized for nearly the last month, with no signs that he will emerge from his incapacitated state.

McConnell was admitted to an undisclosed hospital on June 14th after being found unconscious at his home in Washington, D.C., last being seen in public when he participated in Senate votes at the U.S. Capitol on June 11th. Since his admission, considerable speculation has arisen about his health, following years of its visibly jarring decline play out in the public eye. McConnell’s staff has done little to assuage the public of any of its concerns or dispel any of its suspicions, as it has remained largely silent on his status.

On the day of his hospitalization, McConnell’s office released a short statement saying “Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning. He is receiving excellent care.” One week after his hospitalization, his office released another brief statement confirming his health would keep him from voting during the week before Congress’ recess until the Senate’s return on July 14th — one month to the day of McConnell’s current admission to the hospital. As weeks approached nearly a month without any indication of if and when McConnell would be released from his hospital stay, his office released yet another vague statement on July 2nd conveying that his status “continues to improve” without giving any insight into what those improvements or his general status were other than stating that the senator is continuing to work closely with his staff. As tensions surrounding McConnell’s health continue to amplify, so does his office’s secrecy. Since the last public statement on the status of the senator’s health and well-being, issued on July 2nd, his office has not released any clarification despite being requested for comment by several sources, including the Associated Press.

McConnell’s current stay in the hospital follows several others in recent years, including one in March 2023 when he was admitted to treat a concussion and rib fracture he suffered after a fall at a hotel dinner following a reception for the Senate Leadership Fund. Following his release from the hospital after treatment for the concussion he suffered, McConnell fell yet again when leaving his plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in July 2023, though the lack of any injuries from the fall left that incident largely unnoticed by the public. However, McConnell was unable to escape the public scrutiny surrounding his health weeks later after he began suffering episodes of freezing up during public appearances, which left him unable to respond to questions he was asked during public appearances on July 26th and August 30th, 2023. Those episodes raised the most glaring concerns about whether the senator possessed the health and mental fitness to uphold the duties vested in his office.

Despite his health deteriorating to the point that it was impossible to shield from public view, McConnell remained defiant in the face of calls for him to step down from the Senate. Although McConnell remained committed to carrying on in his 7th consecutive term as a senator, he announced that he would step down from his role as Senate Republican Leader, effective in January 2025. The decision he made just before the 2024 U.S. elections to leave that leadership position he held since 2007 did little to signify it would yield any improvement in his health. It continued to deteriorate, leading to him falling and spraining his wrist following a GOP luncheon in late 2024 before falling down the stairs leading from the Senate floor just months later in early February 2025. A spokesman from McConnell’s office attributed the fall to “lingering effects of polio in his left leg” that the senator has suffered since contracting the virus at the age of two in 1944. After the fall, McConnell was seen using a wheelchair, which his staff described as a “precautionary matter.” With the toll his declining health was taking impossible even for him to deny, McConnell announced he would not seek re-election following the conclusion of his 7th term as senator on February 20th, 2025 — his 83rd birthday.

Although McConnell had finally acquiesced to calls for him to end his career in the Senate, he remained determined to see out his final term despite prevailing indications increasing doubt as to whether he would be able to do so. His continually declining health led to him being hospitalized for flu-like symptoms from February 2nd to 10th, 2026, nearly a year following his announcement that he would not seek re-election and weeks before his 84th birthday. McConnell would return to the Senate to serve in his office following the penultimate of his hospitalizations to date, becoming seen using a wheelchair with regularity and depending on staff to assist him with navigating the halls of Congress. Despite that decrepit state, McConnell continued to adamantly reject calls for his immediate resignation over ongoing concerns about his health.

Following his ongoing hospitalization beginning on June 14th, multiple media outlets reported audio of dispatch calls made to emergency services who responded to finding McConnell unconscious in the early hours of that morning. Audio from the calls revealed emergency service personnel discussing performing CPR on a victim of “cardiac arrest.” Desirée Townsend, the independent journalist who first obtained the audio of the emergency dispatch calls from McConnell’s home, stated that her sources told her that the senator has been declared brain dead by hospital staff. However, no official statement to that effect has been corroborated.

Although officials from McConnell’s office would not specify the extent of his illness nor the validity of the reports about audio taken from emergency responders, the severity of the picture those reports painted led to renewed calls on not just his resignation, but for term limits in Congress, as well as speculation on whether McConnell would ever return to his office and how he would be replaced if necessary.

Currently, McConnell is one of seven U.S. senators that are in their eighties, with Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey set to turn 80 on July 11th, which would make him the eighth. McConnell is the third oldest of these senators, only being younger than 84-year-old Bernie Sanders of Vermont and 92-year-old Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Longtime California Senator Dianne Feinstein served in her office until her death in 2023 at the age of 90. The mystery surrounding the health of Mitch McConnell putting the problems presented by elected representatives serving effectively serving for life so long as they can be re-elected, re-instigated the dialogue on imposing term limits. Outgoing Kentucky representative Thomas Massie responded to reports surrounding McConnell’s enigmatic hospitalization with remarks posted on his X account. While the tone of Massie’s response to rumors surrounding McConnell’s health was made in jest, Massie has been a longtime supporter of term limits. During the 117th Congress from 2021 to 2023, he signed the U.S. Term Limits Pledge, committing to support a constitutional amendment that would impose limits of three terms for house representatives and two terms for senators.

Although Massie’s opposition to career politicians like McConnell and a lack of term limits allowing them to become entrenched in Washington institutions is rooted in how they upset the balance of the separation of powers in which the executive branch is limited to two terms, it may be naive to believe that imposing any limitations on serving in Congress would rein in a political class that critics view as antithetical to the foundation of American democracy. While term limits would make it impossible for the likes of McConnell to serve in a leadership position in Congress for decades, those limits would also strengthen the stranglehold that the false dichotomy of America’s two-party system has over the nation. Term limits would render the tenures of elected representatives like those of Massie and his mentor Ron Paul — rare exceptions to the festering corruption plaguing Washington D.C. — shorter, allowing the Democratic and Republican parties to replace them with candidates more aligned with the Washington establishment. Outgoing elected officials already aligned with that establishment would likely be replaced by others of that ilk, making the only meaningful change the ouster of representatives who defy that existing power structure, who come few and far in between. In practice, that dynamic would further consolidate the existing power structure controlling Washington, D.C., leaving its opponents with fewer opportunities to defeat it.

Massie is a quintessential example of how the Washington establishment will expend any of the seemingly infinite resources it has at its disposal to subdue its opposition. The behemoth struggle that opponents to the powers that be face was illustrated by his loss to Ed Gallrein in the May 19th Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District of Kentucky, a congressional seat Massie has held for eight consecutive terms, despite him being in favor of term limits, since first being elected in 2012 in a special election for a vacant seat in the district following the resignation of Republican representative Geoff Davis.

The irony of Massie being ousted from his congressional seat by the two-party system entrenched in Washington, D.C., is that their goal of removing him from Congress could be upended in the event that Senator McConnell is unable to fulfill his remaining term lasting until January 20th, 2027. In the event McConnell’s health leads to his death or resignation, his vacant seat in the Senate would necessitate a special election to fill it. Until 2024, Kentucky’s governor would have been able to appoint a U.S. senator in the event of a vacancy. That practice ended in April 2024 when the Kentucky General Assembly repealed the statute authorizing temporary gubernatorial appointments in a resounding vote that overrode the veto of Democratic Governor Andy Beshear.

Although Republican Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District is slated to face off against Democratic opponent Charles Booker, a former state representative who represented the 43rd district in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021, Massie’s decision to not campaign to succeed the retiring senator Mitch McConnell was made before he lost his re-election campaign for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Massie now due to leave the House at the conclusion of his current term may ultimately change his calculus on whether or not to run for the Senate in the event that a special election is called to replace McConnell.

In any event, the inevitable and rapidly approaching end of Mitch McConnell’s decades-long career in Congress is not symbolic of any changing of the guard. Though McConnell is the personification of a corrupt system determining how U.S. politics operates, he is not a vestige of that system as it still continues to define the power structure driving the inner machinations of Washington, D.C. What McConnell’s demise does is convey the systemic challenges that Americans face in confronting that imbalance of power, as the flaws of popular suggestions to remedy it such as imposing term limits highlight how they fall short of addressing the fundamental issues imposed by the country’s two-party system. Those shortcomings make viewing simply replacing the likes of the Mitch McConnells of the world as a triumph as myopic as treating the symptoms of an illness without attacking the underlying disease causing them.