MSNBC’s Joy Reid has seen enough of our prima donna senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who claims to be a cosponsor of S. 1, the For the People Act, but will not do what is required to actually pass the bill – end the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule.
You don’t get any credit for sponsoring the bill if you are the one responsible for preventing the bill from passing the Senate because of your indefensible position supporting the Senate filibuster rule.
Joy Reid expressed her exasperation with Kyrsten Sinema (excerpt):
Joy Reid: I frankly do not … I can’t think of an explanation for what Manchin and Sinema are doing, unless it is that they actually prefer that Republicans control the process, and maybe that Republicans control the Senate, OR that they themselves don’t even plan maybe to run for reelection and are looking to their next thing which they think is going to take place in a right-wing Republican-controlled world. They’re just preparing themselves basically to be the “Smoking Man” on the X-Files and let the other guys win. I don’t know another explanation, do you?
Al Franken: (responds) He references Norm Orstein’s proposed reform of the Senate filibuster rule. See, Norm Ornstein: Reform The Filibuster To Its Former Requirements.
Joy Reid: The thing is … Kyrsten Sinema knows everything that Al Franken just said. She understands everything that’s happening in her own state. I can only conclude that she supports what they’re doing and wants it to proceed because she says – she’s on the bill – she’s a cosponsor [of the For the People Act]. That’s real convenient to let her show up at Black churches on MLK Day, so she can cover herself that way. But I cannot conclude other than that what she sees happening that Republicans are doing, she’s for it, because she’s not for changing it. She’s not for stopping it. I don’t know what else to conclude.
As her guest Christina Greer says, “We cannot have Democratic senators who are actively working against the American people. And that is what we are seeing with Sinema and Manchin when they refuse to support their Democratic colleagues when it comes to really assessing what the filibuster has done and how it prevents, especially with Mitch McConnell and his caucus, how it prevents the American public from moving forward in a real substantive way. The fact that they [Republicans] are voting against the January 6 Commission should be proof enough alone to let us know that these individuals are not interested in the health and wealth and continuation of this American democracy.”
Well said.
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Here’s some sad truth, very good article by Adam Serwer.
The Capitol Rioters Won
Although some Republican leaders deplored their violence, most have come to support the rioters’ claim that Trump’s defeat meant the election was inherently illegitimate.
“…Republicans are not blocking a bipartisan January 6 commission because they fear Trump, or because they want to “move on” from 2020. They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate—the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American—they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/capitol-rioters-won/619075/
Joe Manchin has dug in on the Infrastructure bill, says its got to be bipartisan.
Here’s who Manchin represents…
West Virginia had the largest population drop in the US from 2010 to 2020, the census shows
John L. Dorman May 22, 2021, 2:12 PM
From 2010 to 2020, West Virginia lost a higher percentage of its population than any other US state, according to new data from the US Census Bureau.
In 2010, the population of the Mountain State stood at 1.85 million, but by 2020, that number had declined to 1.79 million people.
The population loss of 3.2%, or roughly 59,000 people, made the state one of only seven others across the country that are set to lose a congressional district following the 2020 Census.
According to the Associated Press, some of the main reasons cited for West Virginia’s population loss are a lack of economic opportunity, low pay, the state’s political climate, and poor cell phone and internet service.
The poverty rate in West Virginia is 16%, which is higher than the national average.
In 2019, the national poverty rate was 10.5%, according to the Census Bureau.
The Census data revealed that from 2015 to 2019, only 76% of the state’s households had broadband internet subscriptions.
https://www.businessinsider.com/west-virginia-largest-population-drop-census-2021-5
If the Democrats had 52 Senators right now, Manchin and Sinema would be a couple of annoying cry babies, if anything. No one would be talking about them or pandering to them or begging for their vote or pleading with them to do what is right for the American people.
Sadly, the 50-50 split gave a couple of power grabbing attention seekers this opportunity to be heard, to be seen, to be elevated to a status neither one deserves. Any Democratic Senator could have done this.
What Manchin and Sinema are doing is not based on their principles, or beliefs, or even their interpretation of how best to represent their constituents.
What Manchin and Sinema are doing is based solely on psychological problems they have inside their own heads, nothing more.
The legislation being proposed by the Biden Administration is long overdue and Biden had a very narrow window of opportunity to get some of these bills passed. Any Democratic legislator who blocks this agenda is an enemy of the American people who have been waiting too damn long.
I’ve given up on Sinema. All I see is a selfish, self-absorbed woman who has been promoted several levels above her knowledge and ability.
Amanda Becker for The 19th reports, “Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t feel the need to explain herself”, https://19thnews.org/2021/05/kyrsten-sinema-filibuster-curtsy/
(excerpts)
In this political climate, it is becoming increasingly unclear whether Sinema’s continued desire to hear from her Republican colleagues, but not explain herself to her more liberal constituents, is the best way to achieve the kind of durable change she has sought during her political career.
David Lujan, a Democrat who served with Sinema in the statehouse representing their Phoenix-area district, said in an interview last month that the senator is as “politically astute as anybody.” If he had to pick one issue that might bring her around to changing the filibuster, it would be the voting-rights bill she cosponsored. “If she realizes that there’s just no way to compromise, I think she will consider: What are the other options to be able to get [this] done?” he said.
But the little she’s said recently doesn’t make that look likely. When the Arizona Republic asked Sinema about the filibuster in a rare interview last week, she told them that senators need to “get out of their comfort zones” and build bipartisan coalitions because that is the way “lasting things get done.”
“The reality is that legislation that stands the test of time is created through both bipartisanship and compromise,” she added.
[T]he first four months of this year are the only time in Sinema’s 16 years in public office that she has been a part of the political majority. Her continued focus on building coalitions with Republicans, without showing signs of recalibration, have Arizona progressives worried Sinema is now poised to throw bombs at her own party’s priorities.
To gain insight into Sinema’s thinking, The 19th spoke to nearly two dozen individuals who are either friends with the senator, worked with her in the state legislature or in Congress or during her campaigns, or belong to key constituency groups that hope to bend her ear.
[S]inema’s office ignored all but one of a dozen requests made by The 19th to interview the senator in Washington, or in Arizona, or by phone or email. They likewise declined to make a member of her staff available to discuss her policy priorities or respond to points that would be made in this story. “I am sorry we missed you,” a spokesperson eventually replied when The 19th traveled to Arizona during an in-state work period last month.
Sarah Jones at New York Magazine adds, “What Does Kyrsten Sinema Care About?”, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/what-does-kyrsten-sinema-care-about.html
Kyrsten Sinema could do something about the filibuster, but she won’t. … Sinema’s reticence isn’t unusual, and as The 19th recently reported, the trait extends to more than her personal life. When the senator curtsied as she voted against including a $15 minimum wage in the last stimulus bill, she had a reason. She’d brought a chocolate cake for Senate staffers to share, and was acknowledging them as they thanked her. That doesn’t explain her jaunty thumbs-down gesture, or absolve her for the vote itself. Rather, the incident seems quintessentially Sinema: conservative ideology, overlaid with a cultivated flippancy. If Sinema cares about anything at all, it can be difficult to tell.
Constituent service may not be a top concern, for example. “Outside of calling her general office number, I don’t know how to get ahold of this woman,” a Tucson-area labor leader told The 19th. The leader, Trish Muir of the Pima Area Labor Federation, said that the senator’s Tucson office appeared unoccupied.
Her opposition to filibuster reform begs other questions. Sinema co-sponsored S.1, a comprehensive voting-rights bill that earned its designation as a marker of its perceived importance. Yet Sinema steadfastly clings to an obstacle in the bill’s path to passage: the filibuster. The answer she gave reporters in Tucson on Tuesday is nearly identical to comments she made in April, when she suggested that “the solution is for senators to change their behavior and begin to work together, which is what the country wants us to do.”
Sinema’s commitment to bipartisanship may be proof the senator possesses a coherent ideology after all. But her filibuster comments in Tucson are proof that ideology is based on an alternative history and a false set of facts. Far from being a way for the Senate to discover “comity,” the filibuster was used historically to block major civil-rights bills from passage. As a tool it was useful principally to the defenders of Jim Crow and their allies, not to dewy-eyed bipartisan dreamers. By co-sponsoring S.1, Sinema has thrown her support to the opposing side of history — in theory. If she’s really serious about voting rights, however, she’s trapped herself in an uncomfortable position. If she wants to keep the filibuster in place, she empowers the modern-day descendants of the old segregationists.
[In] exchange for power, a senator is accountable not only to her peers in office but to the press and to voters. Instead, the public gets Sinema wearing a “Fuck Off” ring. If the public opinion doesn’t matter to her, and if passing S.1 doesn’t matter either, then what does? What makes the filibuster so attractive to any Democrat right now? In lieu of answers, Sinema leaves onlookers to assume an ugly truth. She isn’t in office to pass legislation. She’s there for herself.