Splinter: Andy Beshear Cannot and Should Not Replace Allegedly Alive Mitch McConnell

Dark Lord of the Republican Senate, Mitch McConnell, was last seen in public 40 days ago, cast his last vote 43 days ago, and had a photograph that everyone could agree was real last taken of him 50 days ago. He was hospitalized on June 14th, and with every day out of the public eye, more and more rumors of his demise spread across every political corner of the web, and like any normal healthy democracy definitely not crumbling into the sea under the weight of its own greed and hubris, one of the most powerful men alive had to release a proof-of-life photo that seemingly half of Democrats and Republicans immediately called bullshit on.

This saga where, to some degree, we are all clearly being lied to by McConnell’s office seems to be driving everyone a little batty, and a talking point has popped up on the left and center that is so annoying that it has driven me, a socialist who has been 1,000% out on Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s 2028 presidential ambitions from the moment he both-sidesed the Israel-Palestine issue, to pen a blog defending him from idiotic attacks grounded in counterproductive political illogic.

Now before I get to yelling at the stupids beclowning themselves and poisoning the discourse with lies, I want to draw a clear line in the sand between those with platforms who have a responsibility to understand the nuances of Kentucky law and the United States Senate like myself, and readers who have lives to live and can’t be trifled with meaningless details that mostly don’t affect them. This article is for you, the person lucky enough to not be cursed with the knowledge of how Mitch McConnell has planned his succession, to let you know that posts like this are leading you into a hashtag resistance-brained hall of mirrors where you will miss the forest for the trees and all you will see are boogeymen of your own creation.

I think the Governor of Kentucky has every right and responsibility to either see Mitch or declare the seat vacant.

— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.substack.com) July 21, 2026 at 6:22 AM

A petition is going viral demanding Gov. Beshear use his powers as governor of Kentucky to install a Democrat to Mitch McConnell’s seat.

Sign it to demand he uses it: petition.edwardswire.com/beshear

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— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards.bsky.social) July 24, 2026 at 9:26 AM

He can’t do this! You are writing fan fiction for the purposes of making yourself mad online! Even if you accept the audacious assumption that he has the right to declare McConnell’s seat vacant, Beshear’s hands are tied by an anti-democratic Kentucky law that McConnell helped craft to protect his seat after he slinks back to the underworld. HB 622 was passed over Beshear’s veto and at McConnell’s behest, building on the restrictions placed around the Kentucky governor’s powers through SB 288 in 2021, forcing Beshear to pick from a list of candidates chosen by the previous Senator’s party. Unless you think Kentucky Republicans are likely to nominate a Democrat as one of those candidates, I’m not sure why you would think this is a serious path to getting another Democratic seat in the Senate.

But the political fan fiction writers have a plan for this roadblock set up by McConnell in the event he was totally and unquestionably alive, and Beshear has hinted at it, telling MSNOW on July 12th that “Well, I think it’s possibly a contested question” as to what his powers are here. He pointed to Section 152 of the Kentucky Constitution which says that “Vacancies in all offices for the State at large, or for districts larger than a county, shall be filled by appointment of the Governor,” and legal experts have said this dispute would likely end up in federal court given that the very next sentence is “all other appointments shall be made as may be prescribed by law.”

The hashtag resistance-brained hope seems to be that Beshear will declare Mitch dead, jam a Democrat into the Senate the same day, then hope that the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and its three judges appointed by George W. Bush and three appointed by Trump will rule in favor of the Democratic governor. That’s the only realistic option to making this fan fiction reality. All so you can get a temporary Democratic Senator from Kentucky for three months plus a lame duck term until the election in November almost surely replaces McConnell with a more sentient Republican come January.

Stop this right now!

This is actively counterproductive to the status quo. If Andy Beshear declares himself chief medical examiner of Kentucky and rules that McConnell is dead and jams a Democrat in there, it would instantly meet myriad legal challenges and could easily and quickly backfire, forcing him into the spiderweb McConnell set up for him where the only outcome is that Kentucky Republicans appoint another Republican to the United States Senate, currently down one Republican vote. 

Schrödinger’s McConnell is creating the outcome that Democrats demanding Beshear jam up the gears of the Senate want. McConnell’s absence is grinding some Senate business to a halt as you read this sentence. Trying to fill his seat jeopardizes this situation that Republicans are going on the record to say they are not happy with.

McConnell sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful due to how it quite literally funds the government, and without him, the vote is currently 14-14, and there is not as much legislation passing out of the committee as there was before. There is no excuse for commentators commentating on this to not understand the current impact of McConnell’s absence before they make themselves mad online inventing new powers for Kentucky’s governor.

“We miss not just [McConnell’s] vote, we miss him,” GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said to NOTUS this week. “But it definitely has an impact on approps—it’s probably the most deeply felt.” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS that “Basically, we’ve been unable to do stuff today in committees. All the committees I was in today had to be canceled or couldn’t do business because Republicans weren’t there. And I’m like, wow, we’ve got two weeks to go.” McConnell’s absence from the Agriculture Committee now split 11-11 has “put the farm bill negotiations into a standstill” according to another NOTUS report this week.

Again, to the vast majority of people not versed in the legal ins and outs of Beshear’s powers and what McConnell’s absence is doing to some Senate committees, you are absolved from this blog’s ire, but for people like Kinzinger who served in Congress or those who are very popular Democratic podcasters or the posters who fancy themselves as the successors to Eric Garland’s game theory, you are committing grave crimes against the discourse, and you are failing to see the advantages to the present because you are too dedicated to being mad online and writing 2028 fan fiction.

And ultimately, a lot of the anger at Beshear seems to not really be about the details of McConnell’s absence and what it presently means for the Senate, but as part of the broader war taking place within the party now. Democrats across the ideological spectrum want fighters and not folders, and pushing the GOP to confirm that their Sith Lord is definitely alive or not is a way that Beshear can supposedly prove to prospective 2028 voters that they can trust him to fight back against corruption. It’s a fine case to make and I would not disagree with their charge for other reasons that Beshear has proven himself to not be trusted to do what it takes to stop America’s greed and hubris-driven collapse, but I think he’s handling this murky situation pretty deftly and I worry that a bunch of noise and 2028 presidential ambition may fuck up a dynamic that benefits Senate Democrats until McConnell allegedly is slated to return in September. 

The logic in appointing a Democrat to a seat a Republican will surely win in a few months is that it would help the Democrats gum up the gears of the Senate in the near-term, but—and I feel the need to break out the bold bullhorn here to close this out for the hashtag resistance crew yelling at everyone on Bluesky calmly explaining this—that is already happening. Trumpism and his pigheaded way of destroying everything has made the more despotic Machiavellian thought en vogue these days, but Democratic voters who want fighters should look to another famed war quote here, and understand that “When the enemy is making a false movement, we must take good care not to interrupt him.”