From 1989 to 1995, Lawrence O’Donnell was a legislative aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (one of the giants of the Senate). 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.
So O’Donnell has the experience in crafting federal budgets working under a master of the process, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He is in a position to know and to criticize Arizona’s irresponsible Senator Sinema.
But in other Senate news, there is a bit of a mutiny underway with two Democrats blocking the other 48 Senate Democrats and the Democrats in the House from reaching an agreement on the Biden infrastructure package. The two senators holding up the deal are as everyone seems to know by now, West Virginia`s Joe Manchin and Arizona`s Kyrsten Sinema. They are very different people.
Senator Manchin is an experienced senator who knows how the Senate works, but represents a state with the highest level of Trump supporters than any other state represented by a Democratic senator. Joe Manchin has an experienced Senate staff. Joe Manchin is accustomed to high-level negotiations in private. But he also believes that he owes a public explanation of his position to the voters of West Virginia and in this case, to the country, because he is standing in the way right now of an important deal on legislation affecting all 50 states in a very big way.
So, Senator Manchin speaks to reporters pretty much every day about what he`s trying to accomplish. Sometimes he speaks in vague terms, like all politicians do sometimes. You may not like what he has to say. But he does seem to have some sense of public accountability.
This is not true of the first-term senator from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema. She has been involved in high-level private negotiations on exactly one important bill that has passed the United States Senate. And that is the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She is not an experienced legislator, and she`s not highly experienced in the way the Senate works. She does not have an experienced staff who can fill in the gaps of what she might not know.
And the most peculiar thing about the way Senator Sinema works is that she does not seem to believe in any form of public accountability at all.
She is invited on every one of these shows every day and every night, and refuses all of them, which is perfectly okay with me. I understand that she might think rushed TV interviews may not be the best place for her to discuss complex legislation. Okay.
But nothing prevents her from going to the floor of the Senate whenever she wants to and speaking as long as she wants to about what she`s trying to accomplish in these secret discussions she`s conducting, discussions she`s keeping secret from her voters in Arizona and from the American people. That is a huge difference between Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin. Huge.
Not only is Senator Sinema not using the Senate floor to explain her position, she actually appeared to insult Arizona voters and every other American anywhere in the country who might be trying to understand what it is Senator Sinema is trying to do.
Before I show you what she did say tonight, let`s listen to how Senator Manchin discussed the situation when NBC`s Garrett Haake caught up with him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARRETT HAAKE, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Senator, where did you leave things with the president?
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): We have the most important piece of legislation that we`ve ever had in the last 30 years, which is the bipartisan infrastructure bill does so much in so many ways. Clean energy, everything we talked about before. Why wouldn`t you take that, move on, and negotiate?
HAAKE: The progressives don`t trust you, sir. They don`t trust you that you`re going to be with them on the reconciliation bill.
MANCHIN: (INAUDIBLE) in good faith. I trust them, I negotiate in good faith. We just have different positions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Now, that may be a frustrating answer for other members of Congress, and it is, members of Congress who want to know exactly what Joe Manchin wants to change in the $3.5 trillion budget resolution that both Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema voted for. They voted for the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, and having voted for that budget resolution, they apparently now do not want to vote for the matching $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill which contains the actual details of how the $3.5 trillion would be spent, and how tax revenue would be raised to pay for that bill.
But as unsatisfying as Senator Manchin`s reply might have been, Senator Sinema`s response to the question of what does she want is not just unsatisfying, it`s something that no senator with the slightest sense of accountability to voters would ever say.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
REPORTER: What do you say to progressives that are frustrated that they don`t know where you are?
SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-AZ): I`m in the Senate.
REPORTER: There are progressives in the Senate that say they don`t know where you are either.
SINEMA: I`m clearly right in front of the elevator.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: I`m in the Senate. That is so much worse, so much worse than not saying anything.
There`s a senator mocking the very concept of public accountability. A senator who appears to think that what she`s doing is funny. There is a senator who appears to be laughing at people all over the country who support that legislation and have their hopes pinned on getting some help in their own lives through some of the provisions of that legislation. Like help with child care.
Senator Sinema is laughing about that. She`s having secret meetings about the legislation, as all senators do, but then she`s refusing to tell the people she represents what she is trying to accomplish in those discussions. She`s refusing to tell the people she represents what she wants for them and what she does not want them to get in that legislation. She`s refusing to tell her constituents what she`s trying to block them from getting.
Is she trying to stop parents from getting help from child care? We don`t know. And tonight, she thinks that`s funny. Senator Sinema clearly does not understand the full range of responsibilities of a United States senator. And unfortunately for the people of Arizona, and for the people of the United States, there is no one working on Senator Sinema`s staff who can tell her what is so grotesquely wrong about what she said tonight.
Reporter, there are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated that they don`t know where you are, either. Senator Sinema, I`m clearly right in front of the elevator.
I have never seen a Democratic senator behave anything like that. Not once. Not ever. There is no playbook about how to negotiate with a senator who talks like that.
Lawrence O’Donnell then interviewed Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California.
Congressman Khanna, you have, I know in other comments, isolated your focus on Senator Sinema. And that is becoming increasingly, it`s becoming increasingly clear that that is the unpredictable problem here. That`s where the secret discussions are going on, where we know absolutely nothing about what is going through her mind.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Lawrence, you articulated it better than I could. And you put your finger on what I sensed is the problem. I have no problem with Senator Manchin. We disagree, I wish he would give us a number. But he is cordial, he is substantive, he will threat you with respect.
Senator Sinema is just not responsive. Her remark in I`m in the Senate was sort of a condescension to people working in the House. Lawrence, you served in the Senate. Io know you have great respect, you served for one of the great senators, Senator Moynihan. And my problem with Senator Sinema is not her ideology. Is the way she`s conducting herself and the fact that she is not being transparent with people, her colleagues, or with, frankly, the president of the United States.
* * *
O`DONNELL: If the Speaker brings the bipartisan, the senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill to a vote in the House tomorrow, will it fail?
KHANNA: It will not only fail, it will fail overwhelmingly. A week ago, I would have told you there were 20 to 30 no votes. And Pramila and I and Katie Porter, we`re whipping folks to see where they would stand. Today, there are probably over 60 votes. It`s organic.
The reason it`s organic is people understand that we have been negotiating in good faith, progressives are willing to compromise. We`ve said, front-load the benefits, reduce the years if you want to get to a better number. But there`s been no movement with Senator Sinema. And people understand the frustration.
O`DONNELL: Do you expect the Speaker to bring this to a vote, to show Senator Manchin, Senator Sinema and others that, no, you cannot pass the bipartisan Senate bill without passing the reconciliation bill?
KHANNA: I don`t think she will at the end of the day, because the collateral damage will be to the party, and frankly to the president. You don`t want to vote to fail, and certainly not with overwhelming numbers. And the deadline of Thursday, that`s the Senator Sinema deadline. That`s when she went and told the press, if it doesn`t pass by Thursday, I will walk.
Who does that? Who threatens the president, the minority, the speaker of the House, and the majority leader, saying if I don`t get my way, I`m going to walk? There are a lot of bills. If one of my bills passed the Senate, I won`t go to the speaker and say, if you don`t give a vote by tomorrow, I`m not going to vote for your bill.
So, there`s an immaturity in the way this is being handled. I don`t think the speaker will put the vote. I think she`ll say, let`s negotiate until we can win the vote.
O`DONNELL: Senator Dick Durbin, an experienced member of the Senate, is I think, at the end of his patience with both Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin. Let`s listen to what he said tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Now it`s time I would say for both senators, make your mark and close the deal. What is it that you want? What is your final goal? It`s time to stop talking around it and speak directly to it. I would say both of them, their point of view is different from mine, but it`s been respected, it`s been negotiated, and now it`s time to close the deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Senator Durbin does not know what they want.
KHANNA: It`s remarkable. He`s the number two person. He`s so accommodating of senators. He`s not one to criticize his colleagues. And he`s trying to be inspiring.
He`s saying, look, we can actually do something amazing.
This is why you come to Washington to serve. We can actually help working class Americans. We can make sure they have child care, make sure they don`t have to go into debt if they go to community college.
We can make sure seniors can actually see a dentist, that they can actually get a hearing aid. We can actually tackle climate for the first time. The federal government can do something about climate. And we`re so close.
And Senator Durbin, I think he`s appealing to Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema saying, come on, let`s do something for our country, for our president. I hope they`ll listen.
O`DONNELL: What is your sense of where the Speaker is on what her next move is?
KHANNA: The Speaker would love for us to have an agreement and have a vote. And that`s why she`s keeping the possibility open. She`s very appropriately deferential to the president of the United States. But she will see if the votes aren`t there, which I don`t expect them to be, she`ll say, okay, how do we negotiate, how do we get everyone on the same page? We`ll work with the president to negotiate.
But I think she`s not used to this. I mean, Lawrence, you know, because you`ve been in the senate, it`s highly unusual for a first-term senator to come in, forget having their own agenda, defy the president of the United States, defy the Senate majority leader, defy the speaker of the House of their own party, and defy 99 percent of her colleagues. I don`t think I`ve never seen anything like that.
O`DONNELL: No, they never have. Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight.
Lawrence O’Donnell next interviewed Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter of California, one of the sharpest members of Congress.
Congresswoman Porter, do you know if the Speaker is going to bring this to a vote tomorrow and let it fail? As speakers in the past have sometimes had to do in order to make the point about where we really are.
REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): I don`t think Speaker Pelosi will bring the bill to the floor, because I think we already know where we are, which is exactly what Congressman Khanna said. I think there are dozens and dozens and dozens of colleagues who are going to vote no if needed because we have to deliver the entirety of the president`s agenda.
You know, I think sometimes people think that we have some secret information, we have information that they don`t have. I just want to show people, this is what we received today for what will be voting tomorrow. Question mark, first votes, question mark, last votes, question mark.
So we don`t know exactly the sequence of what we`re going to do tomorrow. But we do know what the outcome will be. Until Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin are able to come up with what they want to do for their constituents, to do for the American people, until Senator Sinema stops being cute and starts doing her job and leaving for the people of Arizona, we`re simply not going to be able to move the president`s agenda forward.
O`DONNELL: Well, we know strategically what Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin are doing, one more professionally at least on the exterior than the other, and that is they`re trying to delay any possible action on the reconciliation bill so that the bill that they worked on, the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill, will pass. Then they will have unlimited time to object to what is in the reconciliation bill, and possibly never vote for it. [reneging on the deal.]
PORTER: Well, think that`s really irresponsible to their constituents and to the people of this country. Infrastructure is incredibly important. It will create good-paying jobs and it`s an important part of the economy.
But I wasn`t elected just to represent one industry or just to elect one kind of worker. I was elected to create a strong and stable and competitive economy. And to do that, for example, we have to see women re-enter the workforce, we have to address the crisis in elder care, we have to make sure that workers are healthy and able to go to workplaces.
And so, I think this idea that, you know, it`s infrastructure and nothing else will be okay, if that`s really what Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin believe, they owe it to the American people to say that.
O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to what Senator Bernie Sanders said about the situation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): What you got now are 48 out of 50 members who are prepared to support this legislation. You have 95 percent of the House Democrats prepared to support the legislation. It`s not like, okay, let`s reach a middle ground. We have the overwhelming votes, the president of the United States wants it, and the American people want it.
So I would hope to answer your point that after months, not weeks, of discussion, we can in fact go someplace and pass what the American people want.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O`DONNELL: Senator Sanders has been a completely practical legislator on this all the way through. He`s had the responsible of budget committee chairman, to get the budget resolution on this, which Joe Manchin and Senator Sinema, they both voted for, the $3.5 trillion budget resolution that is now being reconciled and the other half of that process.
PORTER: That`s exactly right. They supported that budget resolution, and now we`re simply doing the work in the House. We`ve had markups, we`ve debated, made amendments to the legislation, put it together into a package, and now, we`re expecting them to engage back in good faith.
If they have concerns, if they have problems, tell us what they are. But we simply can`t negotiate away from — you know, with ourselves and away from what the American people want if there are no meaningful competing concerns. And I was elected to represent the people of Orange County, to fight for families, to stand up to corporate interests. I wasn`t elected to read the mind of Kyrsten Sinema. Thank goodness, because I have no idea what she is thinking.
O`DONNELL: Well, you`re in similar situations, right, because she won a previously a — Senate seat that was previously held by a Republican. You won a seat in the House previously held by Republican. Do you recognize anything in the way she appears to be handling this that is based on the fact that she flipped a seat from a Republican, and has a concern about being able to appeal to Republican voters, as you do too in Orange County?
PORTER: I have to be honest. I really don`t. The way that I find it easiest and best and most honest to connect with constituents who might have different values or different opinions that I do is to be incredibly accountable, to be as transparent and forthright and honest with them as I can be. And so, I think, you know, likely that all of us have constituents who disagree with us. But you listen to their concerns, you tell them where you stand, you explain, you answer their questions, and you go forth and do exactly what you told them you`re going to do.
She`s simply not answering to the American people. And that should be a concern for the American people, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Katie Porter, We will see how the question marks on your phone get field in tomorrow. Thank you very much for sharing that with us and for joining us tonight.
Lawrence O’Donnell then referenced the earlier Senator Dick Durbin interview to put a fine point on the ridiculousness of Sen. Manchin wanting to “pause” this process (because “delay means death” in legislating).
O`DONNELL: Tonight, Senator Dick Durbin raised the one heartbeat away from disaster scenario for Democrats in the Senate when discussing Senator Joe Manchin`s suggestion that Democrats delay the vote on the reconciliation package for a few months.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DURBIN: Joe`s made a number of states. He`s my friend, I respect him, and I`ve tried my best to sit down for a few minutes and talk to him about this. But I would say to him, we can`t delay these things. Simply delaying them is just inviting a bad result, to be honest with you. You know, we`re one heartbeat away from losing the majority in the United States Senate. I`ve been in the Senate long enough to see that happen. I would urge Joe, if you believe there`s value and merit to the programs in the reconciliation bill, don`t wait. Do it now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
In a discussion with John Heilemann, O’DONNELL said: “The situation is the mutiny of the first term senator joined by the senator who is elected to the Democratic side of the Senate from Trump country. The Manchin phenomenon is easily understood when you look at the voting profile of West Virginia. But what theyre dealing with in Senator Sinema, its something that as far as I can tell, the Democrats and a Democratic president has never had to deal with in a Democratic senator.”
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think, you`ve been around a little longer than me, but I`m not sure either one of us have seen anything quite like Kyrsten Sinema, in terms of what is on the surface at least and I`m trying to dig deeper to see if there`s something below the surface. But on the surface at least, it`s total irrationality, like behaving in a way that`s completely unpredictable and somewhat unhinged.
And I heard your monologue, your opening today. I can tell you, the view that you expressed is the view that shared privately by many senior people in the White House. That they feel like Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin, though they`re occupying the same position right now, has the object of a lot of ire on the part of a lot of Democrats, especially progressive Democrats, although they are both holding this up, that they can deal with Senator Manchin. And that Senator Manchin is a commodity that President Biden and his team understands.
They do not have an understanding of Senator Sinema. They do not know what she wants. They do not know how to deal with her, and they do not know how to deal with her staff. And so, I think that is at the core of what the problem is right now.
She is, you know, in the words, in the language of chemistry, she`s a free radical at this point. And that one free radical has messed up all the variables, all the equations, all the physics and the chemistry that`s supposed to have led to a vote tomorrow that Nancy Pelosi was betting on when she decoupled the two bills earlier this week, she assumed they would get to a rational outcome. Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin they are not there tonight. And I`m not sure I don`t think we`re going to be there tomorrow.
O`DONNELL: And Adam you know what a challenge it is, when there`s really – there`s no one in the Sinema office, you can call, there`s – it`s not like there`s some experienced legislative director or Chief of Staff, there`s not someone there who can talk sense to anyone, including Senator Sinema.
ADAM JENTLESON, FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR SENATOR HARRY REID: That`s right, you know, and what Senator Sinema has done as a freshman senator, is to put herself at the center of a wide variety of policy battles. And, you know, a senator simply doesn`t have the staff capacity to become an expert on all of these policies. It`s not like she was an expert on these subject matters coming into office, and she certainly hasn`t gained profound expertise in the few months of this year. And, you know, you don`t have millions of experts on staff as a – as a, as a freshman senator.
So you know, I think that she`s sort of, you know, flying by the seat of her pants a little bit here, when it comes to the policy and making a lot of this stuff up as it goes along. And I think that`s what`s profoundly scary about this, is that she understands and has used the power that she holds as the potential 50th vote on a lot of this stuff to position herself in a position of great power. However, it`s not clear that she has brought along the expertise or the thoughtfulness or the deliberation that you would require to actually think through these issues and counter to thoughtful rational conclusions. And I think that`s what`s kind of terrifying about the position we find ourselves in right now.
John Heilemann added: “And, and I just to go to Adam, Adam made a point a second ago, the one word he didn`t use was responsibility. She has great power.”
“And with great power comes great responsibility too. She doesn`t seem to understand that in addition to not understanding the expertise, having the expertise, or having given the due deliberation or consideration to these matters, I don`t think she has taken seriously the responsibility she has, nor the politics of it. And I think this is what`s most perplexing to people in the Biden, White House, Senate leadership on the House side all around. They all understand Joe Manchin`s politics.”
They understand that he`s the only Democrat as Nancy Pelosi has said. Who could get elected in West Virginia, they get why he does what he does, even when it confounds them and frustrates them. She`s from Arizona. It`s not a blue state, but it`s not West Virginia. It`s a state Joe Biden carried as Ro Khanna pointed out earlier on in this program. It`s a – it`s a trending purple trending blue state where the politics give her much greater latitude than the politics that constrain Joe Manchin. So that just makes it all the more mystifying and all the more apparently irrational, that she is more, in some ways, apparently more obdurate on these matters than either Senator Manchin is.
Adam Jentelson later adds, “You know, continuity is not a word I would use to describe a Senator Sinema`s career. I mean, she started her life in politics as a member of Green Party supporting Ralph Nader, and now she`s become supposedly a very conservative Democrat. I think it`s a little bit hard to credit, the substance of that shift is being purely about principle. I think that to John`s point about Arizona being a purple-ish state, you know, you sort of have a control case here in Senator Mark Kelly, her fellow senator from Arizona, who is doing very well in Arizona by strongly backing President Biden`s agenda.
Sinema is doing worse than Kelly by just about every measure by taking this disposition. So it seems like she`s sort of putting the, the erraticness of her position first and sort of this desire to be front and center ahead of policy, ahead of principle, ahead of responsibility, and in many respects ahead of good politics when you get down to the Brass Tacks because Kelly is doing better than she is.
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I was referencing AzBlueMeanie’s comment (reading comprehension is not your thing) and he said,”So O’Donnell has the experience in crafting federal budgets working under a master of the process, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He is in a position to know, and to criticize Arizona’s irresponsible Senator Sinema.”
Since Moynihan was a fiscal moderate who even was critical of the “war on poverty” and welfare state, Sinema is similar to him, so if O’Donnell thought Moynihan was a master of the budget process and learned from him, then he should like Sinema. AzBlueMeanie needs to look for intellectual consistency in his posts and post references.
Phony John Kavanagh not only defending a Prada-Socialist but ascribing motives to her that he’s making up out of thin air.
Sinema is a con artist, Phony John, if you think otherwise then you really are sundowning.
Liza points out a common problem with John Kavanagh comments.
Every other reply from the blog writers to his comments is basically a variation of “John, you misread the article”.
Reading comprehension is not his thing.
And it’s why I keep telling him to think before he comments.
I don’t think that she is evil, per se, so much as being almost totally self-focused.
In that, she is a lot like Cheeto.
So maybe she is evil….
John, did you fail to notice that this post is mostly the transcript from Lawrence O’Donnell’s show a couple of nights ago? AZBlue didn’t “dredge him up”, he’s on MSNBC at night, Monday through Friday.
But how gallant of you to defend Kyrsten Sinema. Are you attending her fundraiser in Phoenix tomorrow? She’s had a tough week, getting dragged in social media and also had unfavorable reporting in MSM. I guess she’s needing some love (and money) from her GOP friends and donors.
This post may very well be AZBlueMeanie’s most detached from reality post ever. I am quite familiar with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan because I lived in New York and he was my senator. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a moderate Democrat and Kyrsten Sinema is probably much closer to Daniel Patrick Moynihan then she is to AOC. If you are looking to dredge up a senatorial aide to attack Kyrsten Sinema, you’re going to have to look for one who represented a liberal senator and not a moderate one. This is the most idiotic BfA post I have ever seen and that’s saying an awful lot.
I would love to see it but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere. Do you have a link?
“She really, really doesn’t give a f___.”
One day some investigative reporter will write about “The Rise and Fall of Kyrsten Sinema”. People like her tend to get what they deserve, eventually.
But right now she’s a real problem, it’s almost surreal watching her.
The b!tch is evil.
I see that Sinema has arrived in Arizona today because THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON IN DC?????
She took the summer off to fund raise/be a wine intern, and she’s missed votes to go run marathons.
She really, really doesn’t give a f___.
Timothy Noah writes, “Kyrsten Sinema Should Reread Her 2009 Manifesto on Compromise”, https://newrepublic.com/article/163837/kyrsten-sinema-budget-reconciliation-democrats
My impetus for cracking Sinema’s manifesto is not only her stubborn opposition to the reconciliation bill but also her brazen monetization of that opposition this week at a fundraiser hosted by assorted Republican-leaning lobby groups. Are any fundraising taboos left in Washington? In 1987, then–Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen had to apologize profusely (“I really blew it”) when word leaked out that he was planning to charge lobbyists $10,000 to have breakfast with him once a month. That episode seems quaint today. When word of Sinema’s fundraiser amid her tense discussions with President Joe Biden and others about corporate and personal taxes leaked to TheNew York Times, Sinema said not a word and went ahead with it. It was a one-day story.
“Unite and Conquer” is an argument for working in bipartisan fashion. That’s a political necessity for a Democrat in Arizona state politics but a near-impossibility in Congress even a dozen years ago, when the book was published. Yield to the temptation to play “bomb thrower,” Sinema warns, and you won’t “participate in bipartisan meetings to craft good legislation.” Left unsaid is that you can still lob a bomb now and then in the direction of your political teammates. Sinema’s been doing that regularly as a senator. Remember her histrionic thumbs-down on the minimum wage?
[But] the ideal practitioner of Sinematic centeredness resembles Sinema not at all … It would be truer to say Sinema learned to govern her impulses just enough to climb the greasy pole from the Arizona House to the Arizona Senate to the House of Representatives to the Senate. She’s good at the climbing part but still pretty bad at the Buddhist part.
Sinema comes close to admitting this in the part of her book where she discusses the importance of listening. “I’m not very good at this,” the senior senator from Arizona confesses.
“I get so wrapped up in the issue under discussion that I desperately want to insert my two cents—or more often, my two hundred cents. In the moment of discussion, I convince myself that if I can just state my case and my facts clearly, the other person can’t fail to agree with me.… Later, I may kick myself for jumping from listening to debating, but by then it’s too late.”
Remember that, Arizona constituents, next time you have something you want to tell her.
In sum, Krysten Sinema doesn’t seem very much like a leftist who learned to listen to the conservative side. She seems more like a narcissist who learned to channel her rigidity in a more profitable direction. When you consider this view, certain continuities sharpen between Sinema the leftist and Sinema the conservative stick-in-the-mud.
[M]aybe Sinema didn’t give up extremism and reconcile herself to moderation so much as she gave up virtue and reconciled herself to vice. Is it common sense to make corporations pay more in taxes? Then make them pay up in exchange for not hiking their taxes. Are campaign contributions bribery? Then, hell, why not open the cash window during negotiations over reconciliation?
Does Sinema herself believe her book’s message that politicians need to avoid extremism? That’s hard to know. But she sure isn’t acting like it now.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/01/us/infrastructure-bill-house#krysten-sinema-spending-bill-arizona
Sinema returns to Arizona for a medical appointment and scheduled fund-raiser, as a social spending deal remains elusive.
With Democrats pleading for a deal on a hard-fought social safety net bill, one of the key holdouts, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, left Washington on Friday. The reason, her spokesman said, was a medical appointment for a foot injury.
But on Saturday, she is also scheduled to attend her political action committee’s “retreat” with donors at a high-end resort and spa in Phoenix, three different sources confirmed, including an attendee. The hotel also confirmed the event, which kicks off with a cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, followed by a dinner.
Igor Derish at Salon reports, “Former senior aide to Kyrsten Sinema worked as top lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase, fighting tax hikes”, https://www.salon.com/2021/10/01/former-senior-aide-to-kyrsten-sinema-is-now-top-lobbyist-for-jpmorgan-chase-fighting-hikes/
Se. Kyrsten Sinema’s former legislative director and senior policy adviser, Alyssa Marois, left her office to lobby on behalf of JPMorgan Chase, a gigantic investment bank and holding company with more than $3.6 trillion in assets, which according to the Financial Times is the world’s largest lender to the fossil fuel industry. The bank has donated $47,500 to Sinema’s campaign and related PACs, and has been one of the leading critics of Biden’s proposed corporate tax hike.
Marois was listed last year as vice president of federal government relations for the bank and the government relations manager for the company in its latest Federal Election Commission filing. A spokesperson for Chase said Marois left the job over the summer.
Another longtime former Sinema aide, Kate Gonzales, earlier this year joined the high-end lobbying firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which brags that its “political connections deliver results” and that former Capitol Hill staffers are among its principals. Gonzales is a member of the firm’s Energy, Environment, and Resources Strategies Group, where she “provides insight into Democratic priorities,” according to the company. “She is highly skilled at developing compelling messaging for moderate Democrats and Republicans,” her bio says. Biden’s spending proposal includes numerous measures aimed at tackling climate change and cracking down on energy firms.
Meanwhile, Sinema’s current chief of staff, Meg Joseph, used to be a lobbyist at Clark & Weinstock, which has represented Pfizer and other top pharmaceutical companies and trade groups that oppose Biden’s proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies and medical firms have donated more than $750,000 to Sinema during her career, including more than $466,000 since she was elected in 2018.
Sinema has also received more than $920,000 from companies and industry groups leading the lobbying blitz against Biden’s proposal, according to an analysis from the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US.
Sinema has stonewalled the media in recent weeks, saying little or nothing beyond bland press releases. But she has continued to raise money from business groups that oppose Biden’s bill. Accountable.US says campaign contributions from antagonistic corporate interests may explain why Sinema continues to oppose proposals that are overwhelmingly supported by voters both nationally and in Arizona.
David Weigel reports at The Trailer in the Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/30/trailer-so-long-swing-seats-gerrymandering-is-already-shrinking-midterm-map/
Last week, there weren’t any organizations dedicated to defeating Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in a 2024 primary. Now, there are three: A Primary Sinema PAC built by a major liberal donor collective, a “Run Ruben Run” campaign to draft Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) into the 2024 race and a CrowdPAC campaign with the arguably less catchy name “Either Sinema Votes to End the Filibuster OR We Fund a Primary Challenger.”
“Our message is clear,” said the latter group’s co-founder, Kai Newkirk, in a statement. “Listen to your base, join your party, back Biden’s agenda, and help remove the filibuster as an obstacle to the urgent legislation Arizonans need.”
The senator has ignored the criticism of her voters and her stance on the budget reconciliation package, which she [has not] gotten into specifics about in any public setting. She avoided a 2018 primary challenge, which Gallego considered, largely by building a massive campaign war chest. But she has begun to take more flack from Democrats and liberals who worry that failure to pass large parts of the Biden agenda would give Democrats nothing to show voters next year; over the weekend, Arizona Democrats passed a resolution criticizing her role in slowing down the reconciliation process.
“If she continues to delay, disrupt, or votes to gut the Reconciliation Package of its necessary funding, then the Arizona Democratic Party State Committee will go officially on record and will give Senate Sinema a vote of NO CONFIDENCE,” it read.
Gallego is not involved in the draft campaign, launched by Nuestro PAC, a Latino political group founded by 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign strategist Chuck Rocha. Asked about it via text message, Gallego replied, “Oh boy,” and asked about the feedback this week, Rocha said it was “all positive so far,” with an emphasis on the last two words.
The other groups are made up of both local and national Sinema critics, from people who worked to elect her in 2018 to national donors and activists focused on the fate of the entire party. The California-based Way to Win donor group, which poured tens of millions of dollars into grass-roots groups and campaigns last year, is behind Primary Sinema. “The people of Arizona voted for Joe Biden and the Biden agenda,” Way to Win co-founder Leah Hunt-Hendrix told NBC News.
Greg Sargent adds, “Katie Porter’s epic takedown of Kyrsten Sinema reveals an important truth”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/30/porter-sinema-reconciliation-msnbc/
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) delivered a sharp dressing down to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) that neatly crystallizes this contrast. Many progressives are hammering Sinema, of course, but Porter’s broadside captures something essential about what we’re seeing from the senator, and by extension, about the crossroads that Democrats now face.
That essential point is this: Public servants should feel a basic obligation to level with the voters who granted them the privilege of being their representatives. While more may be happening in private talks than we know, all signs are that Sinema’s caginess is edging toward a level of deceptiveness that borders on betrayal of public duty.
Speaking on MSNBC, Porter lambasted Sinema for refusing to specify what she’ll accept in the multitrillion-dollar bill Democrats hope to pass through reconciliation.
Porter told host Lawrence O’Donnell that … “I think that’s really irresponsible to their constituents and to the people of this country,” Porter replied. The reconciliation bill, Porter noted, will provide more home care to the elderly and child-care assistance that helps more women enter the workforce, and will expand health care to enable more workers to stay healthy and productive.
“I was elected to create a strong and stable and globally competitive economy,” Porter continued, adding that if Sinema and Manchin “really believe” the infrastructure bill alone will accomplish this, “they owe it to the American people to say that.”
Stressing that it’s impossible to negotiate until centrists say what they want, Porter added:
I was not elected to read the mind of Kyrsten Sinema. Thank goodness, because I have no idea what she’s thinking.
That last barb got a bit of buzz. But it’s more important that Porter brought this debate back to what it’s really all about: people.
The reconciliation bill is the heart of the Biden and Democratic Party agenda. It would invest in our people in all kinds of ways, providing social and economic infrastructure — child care, health care, education, paid leave — that would help and empower millions struggling to reach or remain in the middle class. As Jonathan Cohn puts it, all this would “alter everyday life in the same way that the core pieces of the New Deal and Great Society did.”
What’s more, the bill is central to the Democratic Party’s vision for realizing our decarbonized future and rebalancing our political economy, which has been badly skewed for decades toward the wealthiest and most powerful.
Sinema and Manchin object to the $3.5 trillion spending target and appear to have reservations about its tax hikes on the rich and corporations. But we don’t know much more than this.
Which of those provisions designed to provide a lift to millions, secure a more habitable planet, and make the tax code fairer to working people and less prone to elite chicanery — which would they throw out? We don’t have a remotely clear enough picture of this yet.
[S]inema, if anything, has been [more] vague.
At the end of the day, what’s at issue is whether Democrats will rise to all of these monumental challenges. So Porter is right: If Sinema and Manchin truly believe the infrastructure bill alone — or that bill paired with a reconciliation bill that’s been effectively gutted — is enough to meet those challenges, then they should damn well tell their voters and the American people that they think this.
And then they should feel compelled to justify it.
The snotty prima donna diva tells the Arizona Republic, “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema says she shared concerns on budget bill with White House, Schumer”, https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/09/30/sen-kyrsten-sinema-budget-bill-concerns-white-house-schumer/5931577001/
“Senator Sinema said publicly more than two months ago, before Senate passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, that she would not support a bill costing $3.5 trillion,” a statement from her spokesman John LaBombard said. “In August, she shared detailed concerns and priorities, including dollar figures, directly with Senate Majority Leader Schumer and the White House.”
LaBombard said claims by House progressives that Sinema has not detailed her views to Biden and the majority leader are inaccurate.
“Like our bipartisan infrastructure bill, the proposed budget reconciliation package reflects a proposal of President Biden’s — and President Biden and his team, along with Senator Schumer and his team, are fully aware of Senator Sinema’s priorities, concerns, and ideas. While we do not negotiate through the press — because Senator Sinema respects the integrity of those direct negotiations — she continues to engage directly in good-faith discussions with both President Biden and Senator Schumer to find common ground.”
—
First of all, hiding behind her spokesman LaBombard is really getting old. She should be speaking to the press.
Secondly, you should take note that this is all about what the prima donna diva wants, she never says anything about listening to what her constituents want, which polling shows Arizonans strongly support what is in the reconciliation package. Apparently she believes her constituents are the corporate lobbyists who give money to her campaign, not Arizonans. This lack of transparency and treating her constituents with contempt – she her “fuck off” ring – is why this prima donna diva has to go.
The picture is too much.
Manu Raju
@mkraju
Headed up to Senate votes now. Sinema says her talks with the WH have been “productive” and they’re “making progress”
8:32 AM · Sep 30, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1443599552976728064
A new PAC…
https://primarysinema.com/
According to a OH Predictive Insights poll conducted from September 7 to September 12, “Overall, 46% of Arizona voters view her favorably while 39% view her unfavorably.” See, https://blog.ohpredictive.com/press-releases/kelly-leads-in-all-head-to-head-matchups
Results of this survey found that Sinema enjoys support (and opposition) in places that you wouldn’t necessarily predict for a swing-state Democratic Senator.
Among Republicans, her net favorability is underwater by less than 10 points. Less than half (48%) of Republicans view her in an unfavorable light, while 40% view her favorably – a stark contrast to Senator Mark Kelly who is viewed unfavorably by 73% of Republicans. Among Democrats, Sinema’s net favorability is positive by only 26 points. She is viewed favorably by just 56% of Democratic voters, while nearly one third (30%) of her own party views her unfavorably. In comparison, Sinema’s fellow Democratic Senator Mark Kelly is viewed favorably by nearly 80% of Democrats.
Kyrsten Sinema’s opposition to progressive priorities such as a $15/hour minimum wage and filibuster reform appear to be impacting her numbers among Democratic voters. “Kyrsten Sinema still has plenty of time to turn these numbers around, but make no mistake: a 30% unfavorable rating from voters in your own party is not the ideal place for a Senator be,” said Jacob Joss, Data Analyst at OH Predictive Insights. “Numbers like that could potentially open the door for primary challengers.”
“In comparing favorability ratings of Arizona’s two Democratic Senators, it is interesting to see how unfavorable Sinema is among her own party.
There’s a movement to draft Ruben Gallego to run against her.
Sinema has been selling votes for big cash prizes to it’s going to take some money to primary her. I’ll gladly help fund whoever with whatever I can.
I’d rather be for something than against but damn am I against this con lady being re-elected.
Ja’han Jones writes at The Reidout blog, “Kyrsten Sinema is not a serious politician — she’s an indecisive marketer”, https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/kyrsten-sinema-not-serious-politician-s-indecisive-marketer-rcna2404
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, is not a serious politician — she is a marketer. And an indecisive one at that.
Sinema is one of the largest impediments to Democrats hoping to enact President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, and she is roiling members of her party because she reportedly hasn’t offered any helpful feedback on what it would take for her to say yes on two critical spending bills.
Sinema is politically dangerous to her constituents and the rest of the country because she seems untethered from any cohesive political, moral or even practical ideology. And in her desperate attempts to establish a legacy of independence, she’s established a legacy of emptiness instead. That’s common for Sinema, who branded herself as a progressive in local politics before becoming the conservative stalwart she is today.
The self-proclaimed “Prada socialist” is going for a full rebrand. [What? Conservative Crackpot?]
That’s why — to Republicans’ delight — she curtseyed after voting down a minimum wage increase that would have benefited thousands of Arizonans and millions around the country.
It’s why in 2018 she barely eked out a victory against Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally, who arguably ran the worst campaign ever in Arizona.
It’s why she wrote an op-ed fawning over the filibuster — a racist political relic — despite the fact Black and brown voters carried Democrats to victory in Arizona.
It’s why she probably doesn’t mind civil rights activists protesting outside her office.
Because in a state like Arizona, where there is a tradition of white, Republican domination, the more she does to depress and marginalize the people most responsible for Democratic wins, the greater her political fortune. Or so she thinks.
We now understand why Sinema let us know she was bi-sexual. She screws both sides …and everyone else.
Yeah, The Sinema Problem was all over cable news yesterday, but Lawrence O’Donnell most definitely did the best reporting.
The progressives in the House understand that messaging is important right now so that the blame for this debacle is placed where it belongs, on the two Senators who oppose their own party’s agenda. Rep. Ro Khanna seems to have spent the day giving interviews. This is good, this is exactly what progressives need to be doing.
MSM has, of course, been far behind social media in reporting the Sinema Problem, most of the focus has been on Manchin. And the interviews with Nancy, Bernie, and other progressive legislators were mostly positive, “We’ll get this done” and so forth.
Despite their public statements, I suppose that the progressives have known all along that this is not about those messy Democrats working out their minor disagreements on policy because of the diversity in their ranks. Sinema is a sell-out, an unpredictable ally of the opposition. How do you negotiate with a sell-out?
Well, the walls are closing in on her. Yesterday, she tried a couple of bad jokes and no one liked it. I guess we’ll soon see what else she’s got.