The mediocre and muddling reign of Claire McCaskill is over.
McCaskill finally ran against a competitor not only competent enough to avoid offending rape victims across the country, but also a legitimately capable person. Missouri elected state Attorney General Josh Hawley as senator tonight, and they’ll be off better for it.
McCaskill was both an uninspiring Democrat and a perfect caricature of a corrupt career politician. Her tenure as senator was littered with the usual stories of tax evasion (she once failed to pay a quarter of a million dollars of property taxes on a private plane) and approving funding for a criminal nursing home ran by a man who just so happened to donate tens of thousands of dollars to her campaigns and perhaps gift her with access to a private vacation home. That, in conjunction with hundreds of millions of dollars of federal subsidies bestowed upon the businesses tied to her husband — who allegedly beat up his ex-wife, according to a police statement — during her tenure as senator. But more than just obviously corrupt, McCaskill was a flake, flip-flopping on whatever issue suited the way the wind blew.
McCaskill’s fatal flaw would ultimately prove to be her penchant for sitting on too many chairs at once. She tried to balance herself as a centrist Midwesterner, conservative sympathizer, and Clinton supporter all at once. Eventually, she just fell through the middle.
McCaskill tried to feign moderation on the issue of abortion, but refused to support banning abortions after the 20-week mark, as most European countries do. Despite claiming to support gun rights, she has a whopping F rating from the NRA. Despite voting for all of Obama’s judicial nominees, she refused to vote for not just Trump’s more controversial judicial picks, but even his mainstream ones. Despite campaigning this summer on the repeated assertion that she’s not aligned with Hillary Clinton, in 2013, before any other sitting senator, McCaskill endorsed Clinton for president.
It was time for Claire to go. Luckily, Missourians found a worthy representative in Hawley, and with that, McCaskill leaves the national stage at last.
