Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who famously declared that his job in the Senate was to make former President Barack Obama a “one-term president,” is suddenly at risk of losing his job. You read that right. McConnel’s seat is now in play and he faces an uphill battle in his re-election bid, a new poll released Friday night shows.
A new poll from Morning Consult found that the Republican majority leader from Kentucky has the highest disapproval rating out of the 100 senators in the legislative body. McConnell has a 50 percent disapproval rating, with only 36 percent of respondents saying they approve of the job he is doing.
McConnell, who recently announced that he would be running for reelection in 2020 for his sixth election, is the only senator in the entire survey whose home state voters give them a disapproval as high as 50 percent.
He has been a close ally of Trump, shepherding in unpopular legislation like the Republican tax scam while also attempting to kill health insurance for millions.
McConnell has often said that one of his proudest accomplishment was blocking President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, essentially stealing the seat until Trump could fill it with a right-wing ideologue whose record was one of hostility to workers and voting rights.
He also blocked more than 100 other judicial appointments when Obama was president and has spent Trump’s two years in office ramming through as many far-right judges as he can. He recently changed the Senate rules to be able to push those nominations through even faster.
McConnell has never been shy about admitting that he doesn’t care what the American people want. McConnell recently vowed that if Trump loses his reelection campaign in 2020 to a Democrat, he would block their agenda, even if it has the support of the majority of American voters.
“If I’m still the majority leader in the Senate [in 2020], think of me as the Grim Reaper,” McConnell told voters in Owensboro, Kentucky, on Monday. “None of that stuff is going to pass.”
McConnell has accomplished his goals of remaking the judiciary, but it hasn’t helped him with voters at home who might decide next year not to return him to office if he continues to focus on his own interests instead of theirs.
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