The missing Democrat
It might be nice to have Kyrsten Sinema on your side.
When Arizona Senator Mark Kelly was under consideration for the vice-presidential pick, he was asked if he thought Democrats could hold onto his Senate seat if he left.
Kelly answered,
Democrats have been really good about winning statewide races in the state of Arizona. We figured this out. We have a strong state party, and I imagine we’re going to be successful from now going into the future.
Kyrsten Sinema wrote the Democratic playbook for how to defeat a MAGA-drunk Republican Party.
Sinema won in 2018 by promising to be an independent-minded senator. She delivered on that promise.
Senator Sinema acted as a check against the executive branch. She twice voted to convict Donald Trump on impeachment charges. We can trust that Sinema genuinely believed that Trump was guilty of impeachable offenses, because she was not shy about disagreeing with her party.
Democrats censured Sinema in 2022 because she didn’t budge on the filibuster. The filibuster rule says you need a supermajority of votes to pass bills in the Senate. The rule is not in the Constitution, but it is the way things are done. Democrats, with their simple majority, wanted to pass a set of bills that would have established new federal guidelines about elections and voting. Sinema supported the bills, but she refused to change the filibuster rule to pass them.
Sinema also disagreed with her party on economic issues. She opposed a big tax increase on corporations, and she voted “no” on a federal minimum wage increase that was tacked onto a Covid relief bill.
The base of Sinema’s party turned on her. So she left the party.
This explains why Kyrsten Sinema was not among the Arizona Democrats who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this past week.
Even though Sinema was not at the DNC in Chicago, her presence was felt. You notice it every time Democrats talk about immigration.
Kamala Harris said this in her speech on Thursday:
After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border.
Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it.
But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.
Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. Here is my pledge to you: As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed. And I will sign it into law.
I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants—and reform our broken immigration system.
We can create an earned pathway to citizenship—and secure our border.
Kyrsten Sinema is the one who “brought together” the border deal. She was one of the chief negotiators. The bill was a fruit of Sinema’s good working relationship with conservatives.
When Sinema pleaded with her colleagues to set aside partisanship to get something done, she spoke from a place of authenticity.
The stalled border bill would revamp the asylum-seeking process, something that everyone agrees needs to happen. The bill would close loopholes that allow people to arrive and stay without their status being adjudicated. Also, the bill would boost funding for both law enforcement and humanitarian services.
Without this bill, Democrats would have nothing to say about the border.
Now they do.
Sinema believes that Donald Trump, when he was president, committed multiple high crimes against the Constitution. She voted to disallow him from ever becoming president again.
On top of that, Trump single-handedly killed Sinema’s border bill, a reality that many Republican senators have admitted publicly.
Kari Lake literally threw the bill into a trash can.
Sinema was a Democrat for many years. She endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, saying he was a “pragmatic, practical leader” who had a “track record of building bipartisan coalitions to achieve results.”
Sinema was a successful legislator with Joe Biden as president. Together, they put together a major bipartisan infrastructure deal that passed into law, something that never happened under the Trump administration.
Should it be so hard for Democrats to win Sinema’s endorsement in 2024?
Maybe Sinema wants no part in choosing sides. That would be understandable. She led Democrats to victory in the U.S. Senate in Arizona, only to be torched by the base for legislating as a centrist.
Sinema was careful to attack “partisanship” for the failure of her border bill. She didn’t attack Republicans directly, although she did make a jab at politicians who do political stunts at the border.
Democrats want to solve problems — at least, that’s what they said all week at the DNC in Chicago. We heard a lot of patriotic language about putting the country first, moving the country forward, and setting aside partisan differences for the sake of national success.
A lot of undecided voters are suspicious of this kind of rhetoric. What do Democrats really want to do if they gain more power?
If Democrats mean what they say, if this election is an inflection point in history, they should go out of their way to reach voters who are skeptical of the new vibes in the air.
Earning the endorsement of Kyrsten Sinema would give Democrats a boost — because Sinema has earned her reputation as an independent thinker.
Firing on all cylinders, Billy. Who gets credit and who gets blamed seems to be a universal obsession with Democrats and Republicans.
Whatever one thinks about Ms. Sinema's policy preferences, she knows a lot about governing. Would that some of that might have rubbed off on party members who mistake controlling for governing.
Great piece, Billy, and I couldn't agree more. Cooler heads in the Democratic Party should have defended Simena after the censure, and the way that she was basically forced out of her seat tells us a lot about the party (and the ill effects of partisan primaries).