“Anyone who knows anything about McConnell knows that’s not happening,” says Clift. “At Team Mitch, it’s been business as usual. Just hours after the El Paso shooting, the campaign tweeted a photo of a single tombstone bearing the name of McConnell’s Democratic challenger. Another tweet shows seven grinning young white men in ‘Team Mitch’ T-shirts pawing a cardboard cutout of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez with the caption, ‘break me off a piece of that.'”

“McConnell’s cudgel is the 60-vote filibuster,” continues Clift. “In today’s closely divided senate (53 to 47), those few votes give McConnell his power. There’s no way to get to 60 votes to force a floor vote on anything gun-related, so McConnell gets to operate with absolute immunity knowing a handful of GOP defectors joining the Democrats can’t reach that threshold, and most won’t even risk it.”

This is what he has used to block popular action on everything from background checks to protecting young immigrants to election security, all while spending the Senate’s whole time confirming far-right judges.