This is not a clear-eyed assessment of Mitch McConnell.

Mitch was first elected to the senate in 1985. Reagan had given us O'Connor and Scalia and elevated Rehnquist to Chief Justice. Two years into his first term, Reagan nominated Robert Bork.

If you're too young to remember, Democrats at the time grumbled about O'Connor (softly, as she's a woman) and griped about Scalia (right?) but Bork caused thermonuclear war. Why? He's a legal scholar who has argued at length in decisions, in print and in speaking engagements that the constitution (A) guarantees no right to privacy (B) does not permit for the regulation of monopoly trade. Scalia-Rehnquist-Bork was going to be the conservative tripod to propel us back to the glory days before the civil rights act and the Democrats threw a tantrum.

And it was big. And it was messy. And it consumed the country for like a month and a half. And the Democrats pulled out all the stops because that's back when Ted Kennedy didn't give a fuck, Tip O'neill was a lush and these Iran-Contra fucks were lying to our faces and fuckin' Morning in America wasn't working out so great. So the Republicans had to settle for Anthony Kennedy who was fine, he was fine, but he sure as shit wasn't Robert Bork.

Democrats go from 54-46 to 55-45 in '88. Bush wins, but after saying "no new taxes" he doesn't do much. Souter? He turned into a liberal! Thomas? Thomas did what Scalia tells him to do, and does what Alito tells him to do. And then we had eight years of Clinton, by god, who saddled us with Ginsberg and Breyer. George W Bush gave us Roberts, who is only interested in being a centrist, and Alito, who is Scalia without a spine.

And then Obama saddled the court with Sotomayor and Kagan.

This is McConnell's sixth term. When he started it was Morning in America and the whole world was going back to the way it was supposed to be. There wouldn't be crack babies, there wouldn't be welfare queens, and unions wouldn't be able to destroy the industry of the United States like it had the UK and Europe.

And then the Democrats interfered in the constitutional process whereby we select our supreme court justices.

Make no mistake - McConnell is no nihilist. "Transactional?" That's a phrase that gets used a lot. But what you have to understand is that Mitch McConnell's entire Senate career has played out under the shadow of the original Democratic betrayal of 1986.

This guy?

In his world, Bork has been a supreme court justice since 1986. Roe V. Wade has been rolled back. The Civil Rights Act has been invalidated. Government has become so small that Grover Norquist has drowned it in the bathtub. And Every. Single. Battle. has been about reclaiming the United States that should have been.

McConnell is up for a seventh term. He'll win. That'll be 42 years in the Senate. With this? He gets to throw the ring into Mt. Doom. This is his Boss Battle. This is all the marbles, right here. This is a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, his ultimate legacy, the thing he'll be remembered for - that he strove to restore a safe conservative majority for the betterment of the United States.

I don't see McConnell running for an 8th term. I don't even see him giving too much of a fuck if the Democrats respond by killing the filibuster and packing the courts. This is the culmination of his career, and after this he will be memorialized in song. He'll get an airport, he'll get a federal building, and 80 years from now we'll still be trading Molotov cocktails in his name.