From 1989 to 1995, Lawrence O’Donnell served as a legislative aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). From 1989 to 1991, he served as senior advisor to Moynihan. From 1992 to 1993, he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, then chaired by Senator Moynihan, and from 1993 to 1995 he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, again under Senator Moynihan’s chairmanship.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was widely recognized as one of the intellectual giants of the U.S. Senate.
Freshman Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, sadly is not.
Sinema is more into being eccentric and quirky – better suited for a career in Hollywood than in Washington.
Lawrence O’Donnell humiliated Kyrsten Sinema for her uninformed op-ed in the Washington Post, We have more to lose than gain by ending the filibuster, on Tuesday night. Full Transcript:
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who`s in her first term as a senator actually demonstrated in an op-ed in The Washington Post about the 60-vote threshold that she knows close to nothing about the history of that Senate rule and how it`s been used and abused. If the staff wrote it they should be fired because it`s full of falsehoods, outright falsehoods in an imaginary world in which bills passed by 51 votes in the Senate will be repealed when the Senate power shifts even though she couldn`t get examples of that happening.
She obviously has absolutely no idea that there`s nothing stopping Republicans from repealing the existence of Medicaid and Medicare and they can do that with 51 votes in a reconciliation bill any time they wanted to come up with those 51 votes.
Senator Sinema might be much smarter than her public comments on this issue, but the op-ed piece published in her name and possibly written by her staff, it`s the single most historically and procedurally ignorant entry on the Senate rules discussion so far.
And when asked about it by NBC`s Garrett Haake today on the day when Republicans used the Senate rules to refuse to allow just a debate of voting rights, Senator Sinema was speechless, literally speechless, and speechless in the worst possible way. She actually laughed about it.
For Democrats hoping @SenatorSinema will change her mind on filibuster, I just asked and got this:
GH: Senator, what do you say to Democrats who are disappointed by your op-ed about the filibuster, and feeling like maybe they could still change your mind?
SINEMA: [chuckles]— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) June 22, 2021
MSNBC clip of opening segment from a third party.
Laughing about her uninformed op-ed falls into the same category as her too cute by half thumbs down curtsey vote on the minimum wage bill, and her “f__k off” ring, intended for her critics. For a putative Democrat, she behaves more like a Fox News pundit trying to “own the libs.” “I really don’t care, do U?”
O’Donnell later commented to Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the lead sponsor of S.1, the For The People Act:
You saw Senator Sinema actually laughing about this today. I`m not sure anything`s going to work with her.
But — and, by the way, I have not been a critic of Senator Sinema in any way whatsoever until I read her op-ed piece, which is the single most ignorant thing about the Senate I`ve ever seen a senator write and have their name on.
Senator Merkley was more diplomatic in his response:
We`re giving them another opportunity. We still hope they join us.
But then let`s note that in her essay that you refer to, Senator Sinema said, we need to have senators come together, debate the filibuster, share their concerns and their perspectives.
I take that as a vote of good faith that she, as others, are ready to come together and have this debate, share our his — our knowledge of history, our knowledge of the Senate, our understanding of our responsibilities, and I think together if it comes to that, and Republicans will not join us, 50 senators are going to find a path. It`s too important to fail.
In this segment, Lawrence O’Donnell also explains how the other Democratic Diva, Senator Joe Manchin, was the lead sponsor 10 years ago of a bill to do away with the Senate filibuster rule:
In one of Joe Manchin`s first act acts as a United States senator, he actually voted to eliminate what we saw today. On January 27, 2011, Senator Joe Manchin voted in favor of resolution which he cosponsored, which he proudly then said in a press release would have, quote, eliminated the filibuster on motions to proceed to a debate on substance of a bill. The vote was 44 in favor, and 51 opposed.
Joe Manchin was one of the minority of senators ten years ago who was this favor of completely eliminating the 60-vote threshold on motions to proceed to debate which is what the vote was about today. The vote wasn`t about to bill today. It was just about, can we debate the bill?
When Joe Manchin cast that vote ten years ago against the current Senate rule, he explained his vote in a press release saying, West Virginians deserve a government that works for them, and they are understandably frustrated with the way things get done or don`t in Washington.
And at the end of his first year in the United States Senate on December 13, 2011, Senator Joe Manchin sponsored another bill to make another change in the Senate rules on the 60-vote threshold. Senator Manchin said that rule change would, quote, fix the filibuster. If senators want to halt action on a bill, they must take to the floor and hold it through sustained debate, and Senator Manchin repeated his objective to, quote, end filibusters on motions to proceed to debate.
Ten years ago, Joe Manchin could see with the clear eyes of a new senator just how broken the Senate rules were and how they were being exploited. And Joe Manchin recently said similar things in a private meeting, comments that are leaked to the press and indicated Joe Manchin is open to changing the 60-vote threshold rules.
Joe Manchin was right ten years ago. He was right ten years ago when he was the leader — the leader of a movement to change the Senate rules.
Joe Manchin was right that we should never, ever, ever allow filibusters on the motion to proceed to have a debate. But now that almost every single Democratic senator agrees with Joe Manchin on that, Joe Manchin may not agree with Joe Manchin about that, because ten years is such a long time in the United States Senate now. Ten years ago was a long time ago. So long ago that Joe Manchin might be forgetting what he supported himself ten years ago, what he said himself ten years ago about what happened today.
He predicted this ten years ago. That the Senate could be dysfunctional if you allowed votes like this on simply the motion to proceed to debate.
How did we ever get to this place where the fate of American democracy rests in the hands of a couple of prima donna Democratic Divas desperate for attention?
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The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg says “Kyrsten Sinema cares more about being seen as ‘a quirky maverick’ than her actual policy positions”, https://www.rawstory.com/kyrsten-sinema-only-cares-about-image/?traffic_source=Connatix
“I think that Kyrsten Sinema believes in herself as a quirky maverick more than she believes, necessarily, what she’s saying about the filibuster,” said Goldberg. “She was an opponent of the filibuster as a Green Party activist. And so much of what she writes in this latest Washington Post op-ed is just transparently not true. She says that without the filibuster, when Republicans are in power, they would be able to defund agencies that Democrats care about. They would be able to privatize Medicare. But Republicans can do that on the rules we have right now. They can do that under reconciliation. And a quick fact-check would have said that this is just incorrect. Similar to what she said when she defended the filibuster in the past, it’s something that the Senate created to encourage comity.”
“So, I don’t know if it’s just that she believes facts that are wrong about the filibuster as much as she believes in maybe being the fulcrum of power in the Senate and sort of not being just another loyal Democrat,” added Goldberg.
Molly Jong Fast writes at The Daily Beast (subscriber content), “Kyrsten Sinema Doesn’t Give a Fuck. Does Her Party?”, https://www.thedailybeast.com/kyrsten-sinema-doesnt-give-a-fuck-does-her-party?ref=home
(excerpt)
The idea that Democrats shouldn’t do things because Republicans might undo them is utterly and totally preposterous, and it is the foundation of Sinema’s Why Even Try doctrine. I don’t know why Sinema doesn’t want to bother trying, but the people of Arizona sent her to Washington to try.
Manchin may be a unicorn, but Sinema is not one. Her state is blueing rapidly, and a primary challenger in 2024 is not only possible but at this point likely. In the hopes of appearing bipartisan, Sinema may be dooming Democrats’ last best shot at preserving democracy.
“She is very intelligent, but she thinks she’s smarter that everyone else.”
Craig, I haven’t seen her transcripts, but Sinema has apparently proved that she can attend classes in social work and law, take the tests, pass, and get degrees.
I’m not sure that this makes her “very intelligent.” But we can certainly agree that it takes some level of intelligence to be able to do that.
So good for her. Unfortunately, she chose politics as her career. As a Democrat in the state legislature, her incompetence was not so glaring although the Maricopa progressives certainly seemed to be aware of it. And her first two years in the Senate were kind of a free ride where she focused on supporting Trump, spin classes, “punishing” workouts and attention getting ensembles.
But now everyone who wasn’t paying attention sees her. The woman is devoid of emotional intelligence and she seems to have other issues as well. Like a need to put herself and her desire to be famous and powerful ahead of the job she was elected to do. Quite frankly, I don’t think she’s even capable of doing the job regardless of her degrees.
The definition of addle-brained is “having a muddled or confused mind; foolish, silly, or illogical.” Have you listened to her lately? It fits. She has demonstrated to me that she is in way over her head and she is totally clueless. She’s Sarah Palin with a somewhat improved vocabulary.
So, the good Senator from Arizona supports voting rights yet stubbornly refuses to remove the huge obstacle to them. Either the good Senator is profoundly stupid or believes her supporters/constituents are. If it’s the second supposition that only reinforces the first.
Just imagine, if Chuck Schumer hadn’t interfered in our primary, clearing it for his preferred candidate (at the time the worst Democrat in the House), we would probably have Senator Abboud instead. Let’s face it, Martha McSally was so terrible she could have been beaten by a common cockroach. And she was!
Liza reminding us what happened in Georgia makes Sinema’s behavior all the more painful indeed.
She’s not a good person, not at all, but she isn’t “addle-brained”.
She is very intelligent, but she thinks she’s smarter that everyone else.
“How did we ever get to this place where the fate of American democracy rests in the hands of a couple of prima donna Democratic Divas desperate for attention?”
Good question because no one seems to have predicted it could get this bad.
My blood pressure spikes at even the thought of Kyrsten Sinema, the ridiculously incompetent, addle-brained nitwit that Arizona elected as their Senator.
I think about what happened in Georgia in 2020, the enormity of the Democratic get-out-the-vote campaign that had such an amazing outcome, two Democratic Senators were elected giving the Senate a 50-50 split.
Then along comes Kyrsten Sinema, craving celebrity status as the most powerful woman in Congress, blathering uninformed nonsense about her “politics” and “positions” and embarrassing the entire state of Arizona (especially the Democrats). She has effectively joined the obstructionist GOP and, worst of all, she treats her constituents as though we can just suck it up. In her mind, she’s on her way up in the world and we just don’t matter. Neither does democracy, apparently.