Not long ago I was generally in favor of direct redress of grievances, like this and this. These public interruptions happen to lots of politicians, but I highlighted two that happened to Mitch McConnell because many of the problems I’m writing about today can be traced to the way he changed the political game in the United States. I’ve often written here that Donald Trump is not a cause of our political problems, but a symptom. There is no singular root cause of the problems in American politics, but McConnell is a major player among the root causes. It is also one of my favorite stats in politics that Mitch McConnell was my senator when I was born; he was also the senator for all of my kids when they were born.