Platner did the right thing and he’s out in time for Maine voters to choose someone else–Monday was the deadline for a special election to be called. May the best future Senator win.

Mitch McConnell, per the reporter who had been listening to the police scanner, had paramedics arriving seven minutes after they were called for an unconscious man in cardiac arrest, with McConnell taken to the hospital from that address.

The Republicans in Kentucky changed the law two years ago to where the governor could no longer appoint a successor to a Senator from his own party as previously required but rather that there would be a special election called. Let the voters decide. Honor democracy. Sounds good.

Except that that special election could not be held closer than 56 days to the general election, and short of that, Kentucky would just have to go with only one Senator till the next general election.

Their party spent big bucks defeating Rep. Thomas Massie in his run for Senate because he’d thwarted Trump and championed the cause of opening the Epstein files, pushing the bill to do so till he won. He lost his primary–but they want to make sure he stays out and is not the incumbent, however briefly. Voters do tend to love their incumbents. Just ask Mitch.

Oh wait you can’t.

So they’re pretending they’re talking to McConnell from his hospital bed and that he’s recovering nicely and that deadline against calling the special election is coming right up. You know that he’s suddenly going to take a turn for the worse, no, worst, but only when it’s convenient for what they want.

The video of a CNN reporter demanding one of them call McConnell right now, live on the air, and let the audience hear his voice to prove he’s alive–and the immediate backtracking and squirming and blustering and flustering and refusing to do so–said it all.

If Mitch McConnell is indeed brain dead–and seven minutes of cardiac arrest in a sick, old man before medical help arrived means he is–then every one of those men lying about it is committing outright election fraud.

We have this 14th Amendment for them (among other things.) We just have to use it.

Governor Beshear sent a letter to McConnell at his hospital room asking for an official response from him on his condition, as fellow representatives of the good people of Kentucky. Well played.