What's Wrong With Kyrsten Sinema?

[Celerity]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/opinion/sinema-kyrsten.html



In 2003, Joe Lieberman, at the time one of the worst Democratic senators, traveled to Arizona to campaign for his party’s presidential nomination and was regularly greeted by antiwar demonstrators. “He’s a shame to Democrats,” said the organizer of a protest outside a Tucson hotel, a left-wing social worker named Kyrsten Sinema. “I don’t even know why he’s 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 who’s been working to derail some of the most broadly popular parts of Joe Biden’s agenda, corporate tax increases and reforms to lower prescription drug prices. Instead, she’s 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 Biden’s agenda. “What do I want from this bill?” asked the actress playing Sinema. “I’ll 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 CNN’s 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 hasn’t been a year since she entered Congress, Enten wrote, when she’s 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, she’s “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 party’s Senate candidates with cash. If Sinema tanks the Biden presidency, it’s unlikely to be great for her fund-raising. So I think it’s entirely possible that Sinema’s motives are sincere, because she’s come to believe in bipartisanship for its own sake, divorced from any underlying policy goals. To understand why, it’s worth reading Sinema’s 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.

snip

[Sneederbunk]

1. What's wrong with the Dems who voted for her?

[Bettie]

24. They were mistaken in believing her

she scammed them.

[Coventina]

25. Were we supposed to vote for the Repuke?

[StarryNite]

31. Exactly!

[totodeinhere]

37. But there were other choices in the Democratic primary that Democratic voters could have chosen.

n/t

[Coventina]

38. No, she was the incumbant candidate, elected in a special election after Flake flaked out.

Nobody was running against Sinema, iirc.

There was a primary for Mark Kelly's special election to fill McCain's seat after he died.

[totodeinhere]

39. Thank you for the correction. n/t

[LanternWaste]

35. You think something's wrong with people *not* pulling the lever for the R candidate?

Takes all sorts, I s'pose.


Good luck!!!!

[drmeow]

36. I voted for her

(I believe for both local and national races) before leaving AZ. Her stance worked in AZ where the Republicans had an stranglehold on everything due to circumstances I won't get into here. Her Republican opponent for the house was a NASTY extremist of the worst kind.

If this "partisanship no matter what" is what is driving her, she learning the wrong lesson when she was a radical lefty. Instead of learning "compromise where you have to in order to get half a loaf rather than nothing," she learned "give up on bread in favor of compromise."

[dalton99a]

2. Arizona Dems were scammed good

[bluewater]

8. That's it in a nutshell.

She's changed.

[C_U_L8R]

3. The simple answer is Everything

[Ocelot II]

4. She's a drama queen who wants attention.

[LiberalFighter]

28. That and among other things.

[lame54]

5. We know it's not constipation

[Celerity]

18. lol

[samnsara]

6. shes immature, inexperienced and still in her 'LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!! phase of her life...

[walkingman]

13. I think you might be correct? It is OK to have differing opinions on issues but

as an elected official (Senator for God's sake) you have a responsibility to communicate your actions to the people that elected you. She is not doing herself any favors. Be open and honest has always been the correct path to success.

[Celerity]

22. She is middle aged (45), has been running for elective office for 20 years, serving for 17, and she

she earned her Bachelors degree before I was even born.

the

'LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!! phase

is wearing thin

[PatSeg]

29. She talks, acts, and even dresses

like a fifteen year old, but one from the 1980s. She reminds me of my daughter's high school friends in the 1980s. She sure doesn't behave like a senator. Too busy being a celebrity.

[Celerity]

40. Molly & Curtsy 👎

[PatSeg]

41. Oh, those are perfect!

Though I think Molly had better taste than "Curtsy".

My god, the outfit in that second one is absolutely horrible. She is just trying to get media attention. There is no way that she thought that looked good.

And THIS one looks more like something out of the late fifties, early sixties and it would have been atrocious even back then.

[Nictuku]

7. Greed

[NewHendoLib]

9. where to even start?

[LuckyCharms]

10. She is insecure and in over her head. n/t

[underpants]

19. Attention seeker n/t

[LuckyCharms]

20. Yes, that too. n/t

[underpants]

23. Thank you n/t

[Moostache]

11. Are the glasses prescription or cosmetic?

Either way, she uses them the same way she uses her perceived power as a "swing vote"...for grabbing attention for herself.

I have no use for her at all. Addition by subtraction comes to mind.

[XanaDUer2]

12. I don't know what's wrong with her

but I'd be spitting nails if I helped elect her.

[qazplm135]

14. So basically

Stuff got hard so she gave in.

[sop]

15. "Nation doesn't understand how someone as cool as Sinema could fight for corporate interests"

TUCSON, AZ—Stating it “just didn’t add up,” the U.S. populace told reporters Wednesday that they didn’t understand how someone as cool as Kyrsten Sinema could fight for corporate interests. “She’s really someone who has it all—a winning personality, a killer sense of style—so I was really shocked when I found out about all the corporate donations she’s raking in,” said 34-year-old Anna Monto, a constituent of the senior senator from Arizona, who spoke on behalf of all 330 million Americans in expressing her confusion as to how someone who oozes as much charm and charisma as Sinema could turn out to be just another lapdog for big business. “If she wasn’t my senator, she would be my best friend. Anyone who’s ever seen her on TV or social media knows she’s a total bad ass. I mean, did you see those wigs? It just doesn’t make any sense. At least we still have Joe Manchin.” At press time, the nation had reached the conclusion that the pharmaceutical and medical industries must just also be really fucking cool.

https://www.theonion.com/nation-doesn-t-understand-how-someone-as-cool-as-kyrste-1847770051

[femmedem]

16. LOL. I needed that laugh. Thanks! n/t

[bluewater]

17. lol

[I_UndergroundPanther]

21. What's wrong with senima?

Narcissism.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

26. Sounds like her liberal chops were ruined having to deal with a right-wing AZ legislature.

At the state level in red states like AZ and KY, Democratic legislators constantly have to get in bed with Rethugs just to keep the state barely running. Enough of that grinding experience will ruin any decent human. Per Wikipedia for Arizona, "The majority party is the Republican Party, which has held power in both houses since 1993."

There is one hell of a difference with governing between state and federal levels, where one must learn to think beyond just local needs. And, there's also the infamous Beltway Effect. Perhaps DC's lobbying machine has captured her thinking.

Don't know the woman, so I'm just speculating.........

[AZSkiffyGeek]

27. It's easy to be a liberal when you can't get anything passed

She can vote however she wants when it doesn't make any difference. Now her vote has consequences.

[LeftInTX]

30. Yep!

[11 Bravo]

32. She's a narcissistic greedhead, and an attention-seeking twit.

She doesn't give a flying fuck about reelection, as she banks a ton of cash from corporate lobbyists.
When she leaves the Senate, she will do so a wealthy woman.

[betsuni]

33. "So I think it's entirely possible that Sinema's motives are sincere, because she's come to

believe in bipartisanship for its own sake, divorced from any underlying policy goals." People usually go straight for the "easy explanation," money, as if it's the only possible motivation.

[48656c6c6f20]

34. Why does she always remind of someone

That needs to speak to the manager?

[hatrack]

42. And here she is, standing up to applaud Shitstain at a SOTU address . . .

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