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Showing Original Post only (View all)What's Wrong With Kyrsten Sinema? [View all]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/opinion/sinema-kyrsten.htmlIn 2003, Joe Lieberman, at the time one of the worst Democratic senators, traveled to Arizona to campaign for his partys presidential nomination and was regularly greeted by antiwar demonstrators. Hes a shame to Democrats, said the organizer of a protest outside a Tucson hotel, a left-wing social worker named Kyrsten Sinema. I dont even know why hes running. He seems to want to get Republicans voting for him what kind of strategy is that? It was a good question, and one that many people would like to ask Sinema herself these days. People sometimes describe the Arizona senator as a centrist, but that seems the wrong term for someone whos been working to derail some of the most broadly popular parts of Joe Bidens agenda, corporate tax increases and reforms to lower prescription drug prices. Instead, shes just acting as an obstructionist, seeming to bask in the approbation of Republicans who will probably never vote for her.
A Saturday Night Live skit this weekend captured her absurdist approach to negotiating the reconciliation bill that contains almost the entirety of Bidens agenda. What do I want from this bill? asked the actress playing Sinema. Ill never tell. It sometimes seems as if what Sinema wants is for people to sit around wondering what Sinema wants. When Sinema ran for Senate, the former left-wing firebrand reportedly told her advisers that she hoped to be the next John McCain, an independent force willing to buck her own party. Voting against a $15 minimum wage this year, she gave a thumbs down accompanied by an obnoxious little curtsy that seemed meant to recall the gesture McCain made when he voted against repealing key measures of the Affordable Care Act in 2017. But people admired McCain because they felt he embodied a consistent set of values, a straight-talking Captain America kind of patriotism. Despite his iconoclastic image, he was mostly a deeply conservative Republican; as CNNs Harry Enten points out, on votes where the parties were split, he sided with his party about 90 percent of the time.
Sinema, by contrast, breaks with her fellow Democrats much more often. There hasnt been a year since she entered Congress, Enten wrote, when shes voted with her party more than 75 percent of the time. But what really makes her different from McCain is that nobody seems to know what she stands for. We need to make health care more affordable, lower prescription drug prices, and fix the problems in the system not go back to letting insurance companies call all the shots, she tweeted in 2018. Yet Sinema reportedly objects to the Democrats plan to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare recipients and even opposes a scaled-back version of the policy put forward by some House moderates. She voted against the Trump tax cuts in the House but now seems to oppose undoing any of them. According to The New York Times, shes privately told colleagues she will not accept any corporate or income tax rate increases.
Link to tweet
Why? An easy explanation would be money; she could just be protecting her campaign donors. But as Matthew Yglesias points out, in recent cycles small-dollar Democratic donors, who tend to be to the left of Democratic voters overall, have showered the partys Senate candidates with cash. If Sinema tanks the Biden presidency, its unlikely to be great for her fund-raising. So I think its entirely possible that Sinemas motives are sincere, because shes come to believe in bipartisanship for its own sake, divorced from any underlying policy goals. To understand why, its worth reading Sinemas one book-length explication of her political philosophy, her 2009 Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last. In Unite and Conquer, Sinema describes entering the Republican-controlled Arizona State House as a strident progressive, accomplishing nothing, being miserable and then recalibrating so that she could collaborate with her Republican colleagues. The book is vaguely New Agey. It places a lot of emphasis on deep breathing and extols what Sinema calls Enso politics, after a Zen term for a circle symbolizing enlightenment.
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But there were other choices in the Democratic primary that Democratic voters could have chosen.
totodeinhere
Oct 2021
#37
No, she was the incumbant candidate, elected in a special election after Flake flaked out.
Coventina
Oct 2021
#38
You think something's wrong with people *not* pulling the lever for the R candidate?
LanternWaste
Oct 2021
#35
shes immature, inexperienced and still in her 'LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!! phase of her life...
samnsara
Oct 2021
#6
I think you might be correct? It is OK to have differing opinions on issues but
walkingman
Oct 2021
#13
She is middle aged (45), has been running for elective office for 20 years, serving for 17, and she
Celerity
Oct 2021
#22
"Nation doesn't understand how someone as cool as Sinema could fight for corporate interests"
sop
Oct 2021
#15
Sounds like her liberal chops were ruined having to deal with a right-wing AZ legislature.
KY_EnviroGuy
Oct 2021
#26