It’s about damn time.

Democrats are increasingly focused on making Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a political villain as they attempt to win back control of the Senate in next year’s election and galvanize the party’s liberal base.

That effort gained new momentum on Tuesday as Amy McGrath, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and combat pilot, announced she would challenge McConnell (R-Ky.) and blamed him for turning Washington into “something we despise” in a campaign video that drew millions of views.

While McGrath faces a steep climb against McConnell in ruby-red Kentucky, which President Trump carried by 30 percentage points in 2016, she is expected to raise significant funds from national Democrats and provide the party with a relentless and high-profile opponent.

Yes, of course it’s going to be hard to beat McConnell; he’s got a lot of very rich right-wingers and coal interests, not to mention Fox News and their mighty Wurlitzer, but at least they’ve got a viable candidate in Amy McGrath.  And you know she’s scaring the crap out of him because his campaign jumped on her before the credits rolled.  If she wasn’t a threat, they’d ignore her.

The Democrats should have had McConnell in their sights long before this.  It wasn’t just the sandbagging of Merrick Garland; it goes back to the first days of the Obama administration when he let it be known that his goal in life was to make him a one-term president.  That may be a viable political aspiration, but if you run the Senate like that, what the hell is the difference between us and Zimbabwe?  He’s not just a “political villain.”  He’s a villain, pure and simple.

Winning back the Senate is the key to getting rid of Trumpism, or at the least shrinking it down to where, as Grover Norquist so pithily put it, drowning it in a bathtub.  And if we can’t beat McConnell, the next best thing would be to make him minority leader and wipe that lipless smirk off his face.  Which is why I implore all those nice folks running for president from states with senate races next year to politely direct their attention to a far more likely obtainable goal and doing the rest of us the favor of saving the country.