Chuck Schumer was hoping for some good news.
Instead, Schumer got the exact opposite.
And Chuck Schumer got the one response that filled him with dread.
Over the last several years McConnell suffered multiple Joe Biden-like incidents where his brain froze and he stood in place like a statue in the middle of press conferences or he couldn’t walk without falling over.
McConnell required an aide to push him around the Capitol in a wheelchair due to his infirmities.
If your staff is hiding your physical and mental condition from the American people, you have no business being in Congress
Prime examples of Gerontocracy: Mitch McConnell fell twice on Capitol Hill just months, Nancy Pelosi fell and broke her hip, and John Larson appeared to… pic.twitter.com/laRHcOPZTz
— Steve Gruber (@stevegrubershow) February 13, 2025
McConnell finally announced the worst-kept secret in Washington, that he was retiring and wouldn’t seek an eighth term in 2026.
That opened up a Senate seat in Kentucky.
Democrats need to flip four GOP-held seats to reclaim the majority.
And the Democrats appeared to have a ready-made candidate in popular two-term Governor Andy Beshear.
Last year Beshear claimed he had no interest in running for Senate.
“I’m completely and totally ruling out a run for any open Senate seat in 2026…I’m going to keep doing this job every day for this four-year term I was elected to,” Beshear told reporters in 2024.
Beshear’s top aide Eric Hyers slammed the door shut on any Senate run shortly after McConnell’s announcement.
“To spare my inbox, texts and voicemail today, just putting this here and on the record: He is not running for Senate,” Hyers wrote on X.
Beshear wanted to avoid the fate of Steve Bullock and Phil Bredesen.
Bullock and Bredesen were also popular two-term governors in the red states of Tennessee and Montana.
But when they ran for Senate, they lost in blowouts to their Republican opponents because Senate races are national elections where voters vote on the party as opposed to statewide races where biography and personal relationships can sometimes allow candidates to slip through in races they otherwise have no business winning.
Beshear is looking at running for president in 2028 and doesn’t want to enter a Senate race he would likely lose.
The map for Democrats in the Senate is daunting.
Outside of North Carolina and Maine – where RINOs Thom Tillis and Susan Collins are up for re-election – there aren’t any real credible paths to pick off GOP-held seats.
Beshear passing on this race sends a signal similar to that sent by Democrat Senators Gary Peters and Tina Smith when they announced their retirement, and that was Democrats think they have no chance of winning back the majority until 2030 at the earliest.