Joe Biden might end up missing Mitch McConnell

• Mitch McConnell announced that he's stepping down from GOP leadership in November.
• McConnell and Biden have found ways to work together over the president's first term.
• This is why Biden will likely miss McConnell, especially if the president wins reelection.

President Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell are not friends — at least not in the sense of how any normal person would use the word.

The one-time colleagues arrived in Washington with deeply contrasting goals and styles. They share opposite stances on a host of issues. And in the central moment of McConnell's career, the Kentucky Republican used an old Biden speech as cover for his unprecedented blockade of President Barack Obama's ability to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia. Even Obama couldn't help but roll his eyes at the narrative of Biden-McConnell's relationship after the 2020 presidential election.

"I'm enjoying reading now about how Joe Biden and Mitch have been friends for a long time," Obama told the Atlantic after the 2020 election. "They've known each other for a long time."

There is a reason McConnell holds near boogeyman status on the left, a position that he relished by collecting over 650 such depictions of him in various states of villainy.

Still, Biden appeared to lament the Kentucky Republican's decision to step down from leading the Senate GOP in November. With less than a year remaining in his first term, Biden has found a more than occasional partner in McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.

"He and I have trust we've got a great relationship, we fight like hell but he never, never, never misrepresented anything," Biden told reporters. "I'm sorry to hear he's stepping down."

McConnell, to the chagrin of some of his colleagues, voted in favor of most of Biden's major bipartisan achievements, including a $1 trillion infrastructure law, a $280 billion bill to boost domestic semiconductor production, and the most significant gun rights reform in decades.

Most significantly, McConnell has chosen to make funding Ukraine's defense against Russia one of the last major fights of his decades in Congress.

No Republican has staked out a pro-Ukraine position like McConnell.

It's this last point that a Biden White House will miss the most. McConnell has been a relentless advocate for Ukraine, even as polling shows that Republicans nationwide are souring on providing additional funding for the nation.

The Kentucky Republican has also defended NATO, a major defense alliance that Trump has repeatedly questioned over his entire life. On the other side of the Capitol, Speaker Mike Johnson is a former Ukraine aid skeptic who seems unable or unwilling to lead his chaotic membership that borderlines on ungovernable.

McConnell's repeated references to President Ronald Reagan in the speech announcing his decision only further signaled over far the Republican Party has drifted from some of the Reganite influences that once defined it.

None of these bipartisan laws would have seemed like a big deal a generation ago. And to be fair, McConnell is a key figure in the debate over "Who broke the Senate?" and in turn hampered the ability for bipartisan compromises to be brokered in the first place. Still, like Reagan, McConnell has defended working with Democrats on areas that make sense.

Biden is far from assured to win a second term. But if he does win, McConnell's most likely replacements haven't supported the president's agenda like current Senate GOP leader.

Biden might not find common ground as easily in the future.

It's also worth noting that of the three "Johns" vying to replace McConnell, none voted for the infrastructure law.

Only one, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, voted for any of the three major bipartisan laws McConnell supported. Cornyn voted in favor of the semiconductor investment and the gun reform reform. Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and John Barrasso of Wyoming voted against all three. Only Barrasso voted against the $95.3 billion Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid package that McConnell also favored.

Trump is likely pleased with McConnell's decision. His allies were almost giddy with the prospect of a future without the Kentuckian as one of the nation's most powerful Republicans.

For months, the former president has browbeaten McConnell and at times has uttered racist broadsides against his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served in Trump's Cabinet until she resigned in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.

According to The New York Times, Trump and McConnell have not spoken since January 2020. McConnell remains the highest-ranking Republican to have not endorsed Trump's reelection. As president, McConnell and Trump repeatedly clashed even if both needed each other to confirm such a large number of judges in such a short time.

It's this split that overshadows McConnell's announcement. Biden will miss the Kentucky Republican at times. Trump almost certainly will not.