How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sinema Without Her Wishing You Into The Cornfield?

Now that Kyrsten Sinema has up and left the Democratic Party to be an independent and not worry about “partisanship” anymore while she continues to protect tax cuts for the wealthy and financial advantages for corporations, it’s time for some serious soul-searching: Did we drive Sinema away by saying all those mean things about her?

Nah, probably not, she was going to do whatever she wanted anyway, good discussion, the end, and here is your Alexandra Petri tweet on the matter:

actually the I in Sinema (I-AZ) is just the pronoun I

Oh, you wanted me to think this through a bit less superficially? Fine, and I won’t even snottily add “that’s more than she has,” because I know better — however flaky Sinema may seem, she’s no dummy. (Oh, hey, Sinema does have the Senate seat previously held by Jeff Flake, so I just did a pune, or play on words, how clever.) She has a plan, even if, like those of the Cylons, it’s something only she understands.

Here’s a pretty good example of the Mean Dems, Especially Progressives, Forced Sinema to Do This narrative, from pundit Bill Scher. For the sake of neatness, we’ll just blockquote the first few in the thread:

We may have ourselves a Joe Lieberman situation, in which progressives chase a moderate out of the party, but not out of the Senate, so the moderate — untethered to any progressive base — becomes way more obnoxious…

…at least in the Lieberman situation, progressives had a plausible rationale for a purge strategy. Lieberman was genuinely terrible on the Iraq War, CT was/is very blue, so trying to take him out came with little risk of handing the seat to the GOP…

…and yet it still didn’t work. Lieberman lost the primary, but won the general as an independent. He then, in the ACA process, played a major role in killing public option/Medicare buy in, a role that would have been much harder to play if he was still a D

This is where Yr Editrix jumped in to throw a Begging The Question flag on the play, because since when do Democrats hate centrists and force them out of the party? And where the hell was the forcing, anyway?

The Democratic caucus is freaking FULL of moderates — far more than progressives, for Pete’s sake (“Pete” probably being newly elected Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, who in the House regularly worked with Republicans on bipartisan bills). And as my boss, who is very smart, says, you just don’t see Democrats saying mean snarky stuff about how Chris Murphy or Jacky Rosen are ruining everything and ought to just get out.

Hell, Bernie Sanders gets nine times as much shit from other members of the caucus as Sinema ever has, and while he’s an independent already, he’s never once proclaimed himself too pure to keep working with his colleagues who say he’s too out there and wacky to be taken seriously.

Instead, Dems have largely treated Sinema — and Joe Manchin for that matter — something like Anthony, the little boy in that “Twilight Zone” episode.

“That’s a real good thing you did there, Sinema! A real good thing! And tomorrow’s gonna be a real good day!”

Sinema and Joe Manchin know full well they have the power to wish important legislation into the cornfield if they don’t get their way, so the Build Back Better bill suddenly no longer reversed any of the Trump tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, and nope, we won’t be modifying the filibuster to pass voting reforms that will prevent Republican-run state legislatures from suppressing votes — to say nothing of protecting the right to abortion.

So Senate Dems spent two years telling Sinema what a fine three-headed gopher she’d created, and then she said the hell with it anyway — considerately waiting until after the Georgia runoff, when for about five minutes it looked like we might not have to tell how Kyrsten Sinema what a fine job, how lovely, how good she was doing.

The oldest dodge in the book is to blame other people for making you choose to do something awful. Crom only knows how many rightwingers have been forced to embrace fascist politics because Rashida Tlaib said she wanted to impeach that motherfucker Trump.

It’s difficult to say what motivated Sinema to switch, beyond that pronoun “I.” It seems unlikely that she believes she’ll have better chances of reelection as an independent. Her approval rating is dreadful in Arizona — a September AARP poll had her at 37 percent “approve” compared with Biden’s 45 percent. Maybe she thinks that since Rep. Ruben Gallego would probably beat her in a primary, then running as an independent might scare Democrats away from running anyone, lest the vote be split and some crazy Republican would win. Or maybe she has no intention of running at all, and simply wants to be the most powerful member of the Senate for a minute.

She can make it snow. It’s a real good thing to make it snow, Kyrsten. A real good thing!

[Bill Scher on Twitter / AARP Arizona / Alexandra Petri on Twitter]

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