Finally, an example where redistributing cash from hedge fund managers causes the recipient to reduce their labor supply https://t.co/BypHBtiz4W
— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock) March 5, 2024
Even the professional ‘bold contrarians’ (like Politico‘s Burgess Everett) are having a hard time scrounging up an argument in favor of soon-to-be-ex Senator Kyrsten Sinema. The Haterz, however, are having a field day — and I am here for it!
Nonsense. Sinema wasn't "driven out," she betrayed the people who voted for her and as a result was unpopular and had no chance of re-election. https://t.co/pfGtXlNi1r
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) March 6, 2024
As we say goodbye to Sen. Sinema, let's not forget that to save the archaic filibuster rule, she allowed critical voting rights protections to be blocked.
She also torpedoed raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour.
I say good riddance.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 6, 2024
Actual Arizona voter:
At the AZ capitol she was known as the Neiman Marxist because she made noise about being radical, but really seemed to be in it for her own benefit. If AZ can move from her to Gallego that would be a significant step up.
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) March 5, 2024
Point/Counterpoint: Senator Kyrsten Sinema Retires: https://t.co/GYMjMNiGzU
— Defector (@DefectorMedia) March 5, 2024
You can always count on Dave Roth and Albert Burneko, at Defector, for pithy takes on pissy divas:
Point: Kyrsten Sinema Was The Perfect Senator For A Moment Without A Purpose, By David Roth
The political obituaries for Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, many of which give the impression of having been prewritten in the way that newspapers do for public figures whose last and signal contribution to their legacy will be dying at some point TBD, tend to mention what she was and did before she came to the United States Senate five years ago. These are interesting things, especially by Senate standards—Sinema was a social worker and an anti-war activist, a failed progressive candidate for local offices and then a successful and progressively less principled one for national ones. All of those are more interesting than the years of undistinguished and lavishly well-compensated corporate board service that await Sinema, who is 47, over the rest of her life. None of them really seem meaningful at all in light of what she became, which is something like the living emblem of America’s luridly uninhabitable upper house. Hit a cheeky curtsey while casting a thumbs-down no-vote on a bill raising the national minimum wage to $15, and whatever or whoever you were before having done so will naturally matter less. Or, anyway, all the various possibilities latent in that biography seem less significant than what you have become instead…She was not an avatar for her state’s voters, with whom she made a habit of avoiding any kind of contact from the moment she entered the Senate; she was also not, in the way that senators tend to age and blanch into something indistinct and vaguely the color of money, just dressing for the job she had. Sinema was representing herself and herself only; she raised money and still has it, $10.6 million in campaign funds that she now won’t spend, but her compromises, which came in time to become the whole of her politics, left her with nothing much to sell. The stilted meta-governance that became her hallmark guaranteed that the references through which she communicated weren’t really attached to anything. Her thumbs-down against the $15 minimum wage echoed the one cast by Arizona Sen. John McCain, but was in point of fact just an echo. He cast his against a Republican vote to end the Affordable Care Act, and that heresy became a part of his legacy; she cast hers against that minimum-wage increase, and it wasn’t really a heresy at all, just someone ostentatiously performing the blank sadism of centrist politics. It was just her doing what she did, in short, which was keep things from happening in a visually busy way. Sinema governed, in that moment and in general, like a layoff email with an incongruous and jarring number of Zany Face Emojis in it…
Counterpoint: Kyrsten Sinema Is A Vicious Day-Glo Demon And The World Is Demonstrably Worse Because She Was Born, By Albert Burneko
… This society’s total prostration could hardly find a better—which is to say worse—avatar than Kyrsten Sinema, the mandate that nothing may ever be allowed to disrupt its consumption (or even to facilitate the hope that it could be slowed) congealed into a sneering blonde Karen theatrically performing her own imaginary cuteness while she kills even mild and popular compromise initiatives toward a better future. It’s rare for a single person to hold that kind of power, and unspeakably awful and sad that it fell into the hands of an absolute F-minus of a human being.In any case, if holding her spiteful, obstructive, nihilistic line turns out not to have benefited any electoral ambitions—there’s no real broad base for a program best described as “the most hateful possible centrism,” to the surprise of no one else—it’s also not clear that Sinema ever authentically had any, at least as such things might be said to exist separate from her own quest to get ahead. Which fits, since she also lacks any authentic political beliefs, convictions, or sympathy to or solidarity with humanity, at least as such things might be said to exist separate from her own quest to get ahead. Her constituents as electoral politics defined them hated her guts; on the other hand she all but explicitly did not consider them her real constituents. Her real constituency (assuming Literally Dracula doesn’t count here) is the class of rich freaks for whose benefit she will now even more openly serve. Few could promise to protect them with as little shame, or as much sheer sadistic glee. I wish her all the very worst, forever and ever.
Hallelujah!
Manchin & Sinema prevented Democrats from passing the John Lewis and Freedom to Vote Acts.
If we can hang on to all our seats besides WV, we might actually have a shot at passing some big legislation in 2025.
LFG. pic.twitter.com/HYA08dGvrs
— Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 (@NickKnudsenUS) March 5, 2024
Everything here is correct & expressed well. But there’s an additional piece: she’s deeply weird. Like probably-has-a-diagnosable-personality-disorder level weird. She really likes her (newly acquired) rich friends. But she also demonstrated a poisonous disdain for everyone else https://t.co/NSvBtBKys2
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 6, 2024
Jon Chait, normally the most ‘reasonable’ of professional centrists, at NYMag — “Good Riddance, Kyrsten Sinema, Plutocratic Shill”:
Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced her retirement with a self-serving message about how she is too good for this fallen world — too committed to bipartisanship and progress when people just want anger and division.
As an explanation for why Sinema is giving up politics, this is obviously a total crock. Americans do appreciate bipartisan compromise. Sinema is not the only member of Congress who has been involved in legislation with both parties. But she is the only Democrat who incinerated her political career because the causes she chose to fight for are substantively awful and deeply unpopular…
There is plenty of room in the Democratic Party for a bipartisan dealmaker, and Sinema’s sob story should not deter anybody from pursuing that profile. There’s no room for a transparent shill for the self-serving rich.
The most generous interpretation of Sinema’s career arc is that she came to deeply and earnestly subscribe to the worldview of the wealthy people who surrounded her, to the point where she was willing to incinerate a promising political career to defend their interests. A less generous interpretation is that she was played for a sucker. In either case, the cause of bipartisanship will be no worse, and the Senate will be better off, without her.
Bub bye Kyrsten Sinema.
Thanks for your cutesy curtsy thumbs down on increasing minimum wage to $15.
Patting McConnell on the back first like a good little girl was the chef’s kiss on your ladder pulling bullshit. ✌️ pic.twitter.com/ENKwq06ThZ— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) March 5, 2024
Receipts have been kept…
Just a reminder that Kyrsten Sinema had Jesse Jackson and @RevDrBarber arrested for peacefully protesting at her office less than 6 months ago. She is absolutely against civil rights.
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) January 16, 2022
Here’s hypocrite sellout Kyrsten Sinema bashing Joe Lieberman for doing exactly what she is doing now.
Lieberman similarly switched from Democrat to Independent while in the Senate. (Lieberman basically became the #1 Senate troll, blocked progress, and faded into irrelevance.) pic.twitter.com/wquJ0PdSpT
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) December 9, 2022
Almost like Sinema doesn’t actually care about bipartisanship at all…?? pic.twitter.com/amoolS7bE0
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) June 16, 2021
Kyrsten Sinema will not seek reelection. Her decision last year to leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent puzzled many, @mckaycoppins wrote in 2023. But according to Sinema, there was no ideological mystery to solve: https://t.co/6wO92vpsC2
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 5, 2024
McKay Coppins, Mormon, has a gift for drawing out the worst in terrible people. This was not quite a year ago:
Kyrsten Sinema knows what everybody says about her. She pretends not to read the press coverage—“I don’t really care”—but she knows. She knows what her colleagues call her behind her back (“egomaniac,” “traitor”). She knows how many articles The New York Times has published about her wardrobe (five). She feels misunderstood, and she would like to explain herself…
Sinema tells me that there are several popular narratives about her in the media, all of them “inaccurate.” One is that she’s “mysterious,” “mercurial,” “an enigma”—that she makes her decisions on unknowable whims. She regards this portrayal as “fairly absurd”: “I think I’m a highly predictable person.”
“Then,” she goes on, “there’s the She’s just doing what’s best for her and not for her state or for her country” narrative. “And I think that’s a strange narrative, particularly when you contrast it with”—here she pauses, and then smirks—“ya know, the facts.”
You can see, in moments like these, why she bothers people. She speaks in a matter-of-fact staccato, her tone set frequently to smug. She says things like “I am a long-term thinker in a short-term town” and “I prefer to be successful.” The overall effect, if you’re not charmed by it (and a lot of her Republican colleagues are), is condescension bordering on arrogance. Sinema, who graduated from high school at 16 and college at 18, carries herself like she is unquestionably the smartest person in the room…
… Sinema insists that people overstate how much she’s changed. Leaving the Democratic Party was, in her telling, a kind of homecoming. “I’m not a joiner,” she says. “It’s not my thing.” She points out that she wasn’t a Democrat when she started in politics. I point out that at the time she was aligned with the Green Party. She demurs.
“I never think about where [my position] is on the political spectrum, because I don’t care,” she tells me. “People will say, ‘Oh, we don’t know what her position is.’ Well, I may not have one yet. And I know that’s weird in this town, but I actually want to do all of the research, get as much knowledge as possible, spend all of the time doing the work, before I make a decision.”
I ask her if there’s any ideological through line at all that explains the various votes she’s taken in the Senate. She thinks about it before answering, “No.”…
Here's what Sinema once said about post-Senate life, per @mckaycoppins book:
"I don't care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything."
"I saved the Senate by myself. That's good enough for me."https://t.co/DlZCCR4qCF
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) March 5, 2024
For possibly the first and only time, I am in full agreement with Senator Sanders…
COLBERT: “How much will you miss Kyrsten Sinema?”
BERNIE: “Not at all.” pic.twitter.com/Y1v38YkwTf
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 6, 2024
Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Sinema-tically Terrible ReviewsPost + Comments (100)