Early Friday morning, Senate Republicans failed to pass a “skinny” version of the Obamacare repeal bill, which would have left 15 million more Americans without health insurance by 2018. This is a devastating blow to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has been working hard to pass any repeal bill at all for weeks. His failure means that a major item of the GOP agenda has stalled, maybe permanently; it’s also a blow to his personal reputation as a dark master of the Senate.
Here is how I imagine he’s working through his grief and rage:
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1. TFW you make a big whoopsie-doodle and fail to take away health insurance from millions of Americans:
2. When you try to push said whoopsie-doodle to the back of your mind, but you start thinking about all those sick people trapped in the tyranny of having health insurance:
3. Realizing that there’s no way you can explain this whoopsie-doodle to your boss, the president:
4. That sinister chill hits your spine as you contemplate all the different ways the president is going to cyberbully you:
5. When your buddy Paul tries to comfort you by whispering, “It’s all going to be OK, baby” into your meaty ear, but you know the whoopsie-doodle was too big for that to be sincere and he just pities you, and if someone pities you, that means you’re weak:
6. Trying to get back on track by musing about new ways to disenfranchise the poor without doing another whoopsie-doodle like:
7. But you can’t stop thinking, I am nothing, I am only my whoopsie-doodle:
8. The distressing feeling when even thinking about dismantling the federal government can’t even bring you a fleeting pang of joy:
9. And you’re sick with dread that you’ll never be able to enjoy further efforts to deregulate the healthcare market because now the whole thing reminds too much of your whoopsie-doodle:
10. Worrying that your whoopsie-doodle will destroy your reputation as the man who gets all the meanest things done in Senate:
11. Trying to remember the deep-breathing exercises your therapist taught you, but it’s as if the more deeply you breathe, the harder the gravity of your whoopsie-doodle hits you:
12. Shrugging off your whoopsie-doodle when you remember that this will be a footnote by the time you’re up for reelection in 2020:
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