I hope Diane finds Diane is listening to this episode of The Weeds, is all I can say.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Weeds on the Box Media Podcast Network.

I'm Matthew Eglaceus here today with Ezra Klein.

We wanted to talk about the Senate and about Mitch McConnell, things that are on people's

minds lately that Ezra recently had a great piece about McConnell and his role in the

evolution of the Senate.

I had some thoughts about it, but I think we'll start off by just letting Ezra explain

what's your take on this and how did you come to see McConnell's role this way?

I've been thinking about McConnell for years because he often ends up being the single

most important and honest player and legislative politics, the person who is explaining what

the incentives of the institutions actually are as other people, more or less follow them,

but pretend to be resisting them or don't or whatever it might be.

So, in past couple of months and people know this from the filibuster episode, I've

been talking to particularly Senate Democrats about the filibuster.

I mentioned there that I was struck to see the ice cracking on how a lot of moderate

Democrats or mainstream Democrats were talking about the filibuster, that people who had

always been completely opposed to his abolition or change or reform were suddenly saying to

me, you know, something may need to change here.

Joe Biden, when I asked him about the filibuster, he said, well, we'll see how obstreparous

their Republicans are.

And in all these cases, he answers really the same.

People were willing to rethink the Senate because of Mitch McConnell.

...