Kyrsten Sinema- Ya coulda been somebody
Instead, you thought you were smarter than everyone else...and got outsmarted
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Once upon a time, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) was the Queen of the Senate…or at least so she thought. In an august deliberative body pretty well divided between “R” and “D,” she wielded a shit-ton of power because she refused to agree to eliminate the filibuster. This meant Senators had to court her for her vote, and, being the political ingenue she styles herself as, her milkshake brought all the boys to her desk on the Senate floor.
Even though she hasn’t disclosed her plans yet, she WAY overplayed her hand early in her term and is now paying for it. That can happen when you think you’re the most intelligent and competent person in the room and are nowhere near.
Sen. Sinema, overly arrogant and self-congratulatory from the outset, managed to alienate virtually everyone she encountered. Believing she was somehow “above” conventional politics and wallowing in the mud with the rest of the pigs, she accomplished little save for obliterating her political future.
Is she a Democrat? Or a Republican? Or something new and different? No one knew; Sinema didn’t care. She was above mere labels and would talk to anyone about anything. In the end, no one trusted her, though Republicans did try to co-opt her. Democrats ostracized her, though she was too immature to care.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of the Sinema Party still hasn’t declared whether she’s running for re-election, although the clock is ticking. However, every day seems to provide more reasons for Sinema to join Joe Manchin on a self-serving farewell tour.
Polls continue to show Sinema, the incumbent senator from Arizona, a distant third in a race against actual Democrat Ruben Gallego and MAGA loon Kari Lake. The National Republican Senatorial Committee shared an internal poll with Republicans over lunch recently that had Sinema with a humiliating 17 percent of the vote, compared to Lake’s 37 percent and our boy Gallego’s 41 percent. NRSC Chair Steve Daines confirmed that Sinema takes more votes from Republicans than Democrats, and I assume it must pain her to know she’s helping Democrats in any way.
Daines predicts, though, that Republican voters will reject Sinema completely once the NRSC reminds them that Sinema has voted consistently with the Biden administration (she’s just been annoying about it).
Sinema also has major financial problems. Democratic donors have shown Sinema the back of their hands after she left the party last year and started her own indie centrist label. According to a Politico analysis, Gallego has raised two-and-a-half times as much from donors who contributed to Sinema’s 2018 campaign than Sinema herself.
[Insert maniacal, self-satisfied laugh here]
Yeah, Karma sure can be a real bitch, no?
Once she left the Democrats to start her own indie record label…er, political party…money has been all sorts of tricky to come by. It turns out no one wants to bankroll a has-been, self-righteous, used-to-be-Democrat with a pronounced lack of self-awareness.
Especially when that used-to-be Democrat is a distant third in the polls, has no base, no money, and no real clue. The only real Democrat in the race, Ruben Gallego, has outraised her to the point where Sinema’s donors are asking, “Kyrsten Who??”
Ironically, Sen. Sinema was one of the strongest fundraisers in Arizona before losing her mind once she took the Oath of Office. But, while Arizonans didn’t mind donating to the Democratic Party, they’re thinking twice about the Sinema Party…or whatever it is she’s calling it these days.
“Her fundraising is somewhat dried up,” Barrett Marson, a Republican operative in Arizona, said while presumably laughing his ass off. “There isn’t an independent donor base as there is a Republican donor base and a Democratic donor base.”
Sinema raised just $826,000 from July to September. That’s about half what she reported for the second quarter of 2023 and less than a third of what Gallego brought in during the same period. Democrats are treating Gallego as their presumptive nominee and opening their wallets accordingly. Sinema might’ve thought ditching her former party and avoiding a primary could spare her the wrath of Democrats, but at this rate, she’ll be broke before the general election begins.
Gallego raised $691,000 from Sinema’s biggest 2018 donors, while Sinema herself raised only $277,000 from that same group, according to the POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data. And donors who backed Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly‘s campaign in last year’s high-stakes Senate race in the state have also donated more to Gallego than to Sinema. The analysis includes all large-dollar donors — those giving at least $200 — through Sept. 30, the latest data available.
When Kyrsten Sinema took office in 2018, she seemed to have so much potential. A Progressive Democrat and the first openly bisexual woman to become a US Senator, many looked to her as a trailblazer, someone who might open doors for marginalized communities.
Sadly, that potential and promise dried up quickly as Sen. Sinema became something of an enigma. Soon after assuming office, she began acting in decidedly non-Progressive ways and made it clear that traditional ideological boundaries wouldn’t hem her in.
[Feel free to insert the opening bars from “Don’t Fence Me In” here….]
Before long, reports from people familiar with her ways in Arizona began to warn that the way Sen. Sinema was acting was not terribly different from the person they’d known back home.
The Senator began charting her course, defying Democratic leadership and doing what she thought was best regardless of what criticism or advice she received. She, along with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), became irritants not only to Senate leadership but also to the Biden Adminstration, whose agenda was occasionally stifled by members of their own party- Sens. Sinema and Manchin.
Then, when she became frustrated that her obstinance wasn’t accomplishing what she thought it should, she left the Democratic Party. Thinking she could achieve more as a free agent, she quickly discovered that she’d overestimated her power and influence. Without the backing of a party mechanism, Sen. Sinema quickly became virtually irrelevant and faded from sight.
Having been exposed as a selfish hypocrite, she was quickly eclipsed by other Democrats happy to leave her in the dust. Sen. Sinema has virtually no shot at winning re-election as a Democrat or anything else…and has only herself to blame.
I’m not going to cry over her political demise. Still, I am saddened by the eclipse of what could’ve been a very positive and productive political career now reduced to ashes.
Karma can be a real (and entertaining) bitch sometimes.
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Kyrsten Slimenema can't even pose as a spoiler with those numbers. Gallegos still wins.