Did you see how they were living? How can you delude yourself?

Denial is apparently a river running through Louisville:

Mitch McConnell thought the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol would finally vanquish Donald Trump, initially predicting that at least 17 Republican senators would vote to convict him in his impeachment trial, barring the former president from running again. He was wrong. McConnell’s miscalculation is one of the new details reported in the latest book on the chaotic end of the Trump presidency, “This Will Not Pass” by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

In the weekend following the riot in early January 2021, McConnell is described by the authors as “in a lather, using profanity to refer to Trump,” and outlining what he saw as his “imminent demise.” “McConnell told his advisers there would be at least 17 Senate Republicans ready to affirm Trump’s impeachment, supplying the two-thirds vote needed to convict,” Martin and Burns write.

I just…wow. I would love to know which 10 additional Republican senators McConnell thought even for a second would be votes to convict Trump.

This would seem to be further evidence for my contention that McConnell is a shrewd nihilist operating in institutional circumstances extremely favorable to a reactionary faction whose primary goal is to grind Congress to a halt and govern through the judiciary rather than some kind of visionary genius.