Dare Democrats re-think Krysten Sinema?
Try out an idea:
Democrat should thank Krysten Sinema.
I realize the idea appears preposterous on its face. After all, every Democrat has heard that the crazy, self-serving turncoat senator sabotaged some of Democrats' biggest, boldest ideas. A "real" Democrat is already preparing to run against her in the Democratic primary.
Consider her predecessor, John McCain. He branded himself a "maverick." He was positioned on the left, open-minded, non-Trump side of the GOP. McCain famously corrected a woman who called Obama a Muslim. That isn't Trump's style. In McCain's last important vote, he pointed thumb down, killing the GOP effort to repeal the ACA, Obamacare. Had the GOP killed it, the U.S. health care system would have quickly fallen into crisis. There would be millions of people without health care. The ACA had become popular. We needed it or something like it. GOP policy and messaging had so much inertia, and Trump was so invested in being anti-Obama, that the GOP was going to risk the GOP's growing hold on White-working-poor Americans. Those blue collar people, who now vote 65-35 for Republicans, are the primary beneficiary of the ACA. The GOP won by losing. McCain saved it.
Sinema is the maverick McCain of the Democrats. Arizona is barely purple. Democrats win when the Republican candidate is an unelectable kook, and then only barely. Biden carried Arizona by a few thousand votes. Candidates Kari Lake and Blake Masters both lost narrowly, even after both sabotaged their campaigns by sticking with a strong, crazy version of Trump election denial. Had Republican Doug Ducey been eligible to run for re-election he would have won in a landslide. Arizona is not a blue state where a conventional Democrat/Republican matchup elects Democrats. Mark Kelley won because he is an astronaut, a hero, and the husband of a former congressperson brain-damaged by a gunshot while doing a Town Hall. His opponent was an election-denying kook. That is what it takes for a conventional Democrat to win in Arizona.
As an Independent Sinema will still caucus with Democrats--no real change. She frustrated Democrats on a close-vote issue of the carried interest taxation loophole for hedge fund managers and she voted against the minimum wage bill. She held up the infrastructure bill and got some concessions. She positions herself as wavering, so it added drama to Senate votes. Still, amid all that, Democrats passed historic laws on infrastructure, jobs, child poverty, sentencing for marijuana, gun control, same-sex marriage, prescription drug costs, and climate change. With all the Democratic complaining about how Democratic bills would have been stronger if Sinema voted like Elizabeth Warren, somehow Democrats and Biden have a record of surprising achievement, notwithstanding a 50-50 senate. A Republican senator would have killed all that. With Sinema in office, they passed. Accept the win.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Elizabeth Warren could not win a senate seat in Arizona. A person positioned as a maverick can. Democrats complain about Sinema. That helps her.Their complaints prove she is a real maverick.
The laws Democrats might have passed would have been more progressive without Sinema's concessions. But that isn't America and it isn't Arizona. Republican candidates for the U.S. House won 52-48 in the 2022 midterm elections. Democrats have not yet sold their message and policies to a clear majority of the American public. Since Democrats justifiably consider themselves the defenders of democracy and legitimate elections in this era of Trump, they need to face up to the verdict of democracy. Policies that are moral and just and righteous and critically important to the future of the planet only become law if they reflect the opinions of the American people.
The problem for Democrats who prefer a real progressive to a Krysten Sinema isn't Sinema. The problem is that Democrats have not yet persuaded the tipping point voters of America to agree with them.