Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Sunday threw his support behind the Arizona Democratic Party’s censure of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) following her vote against rules changes to help pass Democrats’ voting rights legislation.
While I agree with and understand the AZ Democratic move, I wonder if we need to brace ourselves for Sin-sin to flip the Senate.
Yes, a censure with no actual consequences really helps now …
Deserved certainly but Sinema may not mind much. I’ve heard rumors that Sinema is attempting to establish bona fides for a POTUS run in '24 but switching parties would hardly serve that purpose however delusional it might appear. Maybe going independent while continuing to caucus with Dems? But switching? Even for her that would seem a bridge too far.
ETA: to be clear I have long thought (and written here before) that there seems to be an anarchic or detached quality in Sinema that I don’t believe precludes any action: venal and self-aggrandizing like many in DC, yeah, but also something rather seriously and aggressively ‘off.’ I don’t think she would do something completely self-destructive but if any politico might it would be her, maybe even just for the hell of it. JMO
So Sinema is trying to win the nomination by locking down the Tulsi Gabbard wing of the Democratic Party? Good luck with that, Krysten.
Pointless grandstanding often with disastrous results is like catnip to Bernie Sanders if you’ve followed him much.
It’s hard to argue with him here, but saying nothing would also have been a fine option.
She’s cray-cray, there’s no way of knowing what’s going on in the skull of hers.
I fully expect Natasha Sinema to run as the Green Candidate in 2024. She wants to be the Jill Stein of 2024 to put Trump back in the White House.
Good for Bernie. While most media coverage of American politics is horse-racey or appealing to prurient interest, the Democrats have held honestly to longer-term policy goals. We seem to forget this. The Covid Stimulus was a good example. In a cynical society, politicians might time stimulus to coincide with upcoming elections. Putin, e.g. sent a one-time payment to pensioners and civil servants before the last election. The Dems, in contrast, timed the stimulus to national need, obliterating child poverty in the process. No doubt they will only get pounded for causing inflation and growing the deficit at election time and this will long be in the rear-view mirror. Politics looks like a great place for peacocking, but in fact it is dead serious at its core. Superfluous people need to be called out, especially when they hurt many other people.
She’s such a needy and selfish person, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Yes, I know she’s almost always voted with the democrats, but she’s too addicted to all this publicity. Maybe she’ll just openly tease Mitch about it; she’d get lots of press for that, too.
There is nothing in it for her if she did that, because the midterms are likely to shift the Senate from the current 50/50 status, depending on which party picks up a seat or two. I think it’s very unlikely that it will remain the way it is now.
After the midterms, the spotlight turns off for Sinema and Manchin when they’re no longer the deciding votes. Switching parties right now would give her some power, but that window is closing fast. Her positions on things like abortion (she’s pro-choice), LGBT rights, etc. aren’t a good fit for the other side either.
Sinema probably doesn’t mind this censure, and may have been counting on it. This plays right into her (spectacularly misguided, IMHO) tactic of framing herself as the “next McCain.”
This tactic is so shortsighted, it is a misnomer to call it a “strategy.”
^^^ This ^^^
I think she figured she didn’t have a path to POTUS or VPOTUS and is deciding to set up an independent run for 2024. Good money in that?
It’s unlikely that Sinema is really so stupid that she can’t understand how politically unpopular her actions really are. A more likely reason for her behavior is that she’s really a troll working for the far right and/or Putin to disrupt the Democrats. Keep in mind, she used to be a member of the Green Party which has been almost entirely co-opted by the far right and Russia.
I think Sinema is actually laughing at the Arizona Democrats right now. She knows that they can’t do anything about her until 2024. Between now and then, just imagine how much more damage she can do. She doesn’t even need to switch parties. It’s much easier for her to sabotage the Democrats if she remains a Democrat. This is all just fun and games for her right now.
Let’s not forget she also killed off the tax hikes to claw back much of the Trump tax cuts that was to be the main way to pay for BBB. Even Manchin was in favor of hiking taxes and when that was killed off, he retreated to his loopy deficit scold posture.
Ya know, if she’s going to act like the Senate is high school (or jr. high school), then she should face the consequences.
I was enormously frustrated with Bernie in several different cycles, but he has been completely on-point and very, very effective (along with the House Progressives) during and since Trump. Don’t read these statements as either rogue or happenstance. There is no way that this was not strategizing in conference with Schumer and Pelosi. No. Way.
Yes. On the front page, Josh called her “high on her own supply,” and all reports from everyone (formerly) around her confirm her misplaced arrogance.
In other contexts, I mightn’t disagree. But see above: reports are that she really is that stupid.
AFTER NOVEMBER.
So I have a harebrained idea that could get Sinema out of the Senate sooner at no cost to us. If we convince Sinema to quit her job as a Senator so that she can cash out, then the AZ Governor will be forced by AZ law to appoint a Democrat to replace her because Senators in AZ that leave or die before their term is up have to be replaced by someone from the same party as the outgoing Senator.
Of course if Sinema did quit, the Republican AZ Governor would be strongly pressured to appoint either a Republican (somehow) or the most conservative Democrat possible. So to counter that, we’d need to prioritize winning the AZ Governor’s race. Then there would only be the matter of convincing Sinema to just quit her job and not change parties.
All the gamesmanship attributed to Sinema’s actions. Not a word on the kids she kills by not voting for BBB and its extension of the Child Tax Credit.
And that’s the problem with all of our political narrative:
Big on winning, sports metaphors, speculation on donors and the like. Nothing on public service and how it serves the public.
And all the time, these politicians are wearing inappropriate clothing.
They should be wearing peaked caps, field jackets, riding trousers and jackboots.
The preceding line: Sinema’s appropriate wardrobe…and this is not snark. People respond to symbols. Cloaking Republicans (and their allies) in conventional clothing suggests (and more importantly, SYMBOLIZES) that they are public servants. They are not.