Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faces off against President Barack Obama at the White House in 2010. Throughout the Obama years, McConnell played the role of obstructionist. Official White House photograph by Pete Souza.

In tennis, one way to serve an ace is to serve right down the middle. But what works in sports doesn’t always work in politics. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – how I love it when WaPo posters (that’s Washington Post posters to the uninitiated) call him “Kentucky Fried Voldemort” – tried to serve one right down the middle with the Senate’s health-care bill. But all he’s gotten so far for his troubles is a double fault as Conservatives, that world of No Theater, balk at “Obamacare Light” and liberals decry the bill’s meanness toward, well, everyone but rich people.

Will Mitchie prevail? As he serves for the match, he’ll need every Republican vote – and he’s no Federer.

What burns me as much as the miserly Mitch – he of the thinnest, crinkliest mouth this side of Charlie Brown – are those people who say they’re tired of paying for poor people who feel entitled. I have met very few poor people who feel entitled. They’re too busy scrambling to survive.

You can’t say the same about the Trumpettes, incessantly whining about their lost jobs; immigrants, particularly Muslims; and anything that impedes their return to the whites-only 1950s. They don’t want to pay for Planned Parenthood, Medicaid, Medicare, mental health services, emergency rooms, blah, blah, blah.

Well, guess what? I don’t want to pay for them, because the price is a diminished America that’s bageled in every set.