Good news, everyone! Sen. Kyrsten Sinema from the Sinema Party is ready to greet her less-than-adoring public. She famously doesn’t talk much to the press. However, she’s up for re-election next year and her approval rating has flatlined. McKay Coppins at The Atlantic describes her situation in “The Kyrsten Sinema Theory of American Politics,” which, like my high school theory of dating, has not proven in any way successful.
“Kyrsten Sinema knows what everybody says about her,” the article begins as if Sinema is the lead in an Edith Wharton tragedy. “I don’t really care,” she insists about her mostly negative press coverage, but she’s not a method actor who claims to never read their reviews or watch their own movies (they’re also lying, by the way). She acknowledges that her colleagues have called her an “egomaniac” and a “traitor.” (I think they were just trying to be nice and this was probably the best they could do.)
So, you might think that the whole point of breaking the silence in a major profile like this is to improve public perception of you rather than confirm to the world that you’re an insufferable asshole. But you just lack the political savvy of this future one-and-done senator.
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Sinema tells me that there are several popular narratives about her in the media, all of them “inaccurate.” One is that she’s “mysterious,” “mercurial,” “an enigma”—that she makes her decisions on unknowable whims. She regards this portrayal as “fairly absurd”: “I think I’m a highly predictable person.”
Predictably awful, yes, and that’s the problem.
“Then,” she goes on, “there’s the She’s just doing what’s best for her and not for her state or for her country” narrative. “And I think that’s a strange narrative, particularly when you contrast it with”—here she pauses, and then smirks—“ya know, the facts.”
Liberal groups that want to replace Sinema have repeatedly reminded voters that she’s a major reason they don’t have good things, which includes universal pre-K, paid leave, and free community college.
Those are the facts, but she can’t even address legitimate voter concern without sounding like a creep.
She says things like “I am a long-term thinker in a short-term town” and “I prefer to be successful.” The overall effect, if you’re not charmed by it (and a lot of her Republican colleagues are), is condescension bordering on arrogance.
It’s doubtful that Republicans find Sinema’s toxic personality “charming.” It’s not like they adore Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, and those guys are reliable Republican votes. They just enjoy that Sinema annoys actual Democrats (it’s the Tulsi Gabbard effect).
No one would mistake her for being dumb, though.
Sinema is set to end her political career after one term in the Senate where she alienated almost everyone who voted for her. She is likely to lose re-election even if the incumbent president from her former party manages to carry Arizona for a second time. If this is smart, we need to elect more dummies.
When confronted with her own past as an idealistic young activist who might’ve believed in something, Sinema goes full Darth Vader and seemingly relishes the fact that she’s symbolically murdered her former self.
For one thing, she tells me, she’s proud that she outgrew the activism of her youth. It was, in her own assessment, “a spectacular failure.”
I ask her to elaborate.
“Well,” she says, with a derisive shrug. “You can make a poster and stand out on the street, but at the end of the day all you have is a sunburn. You didn’t move the needle. You didn’t make a difference … I set about real quick saying, ‘This doesn’t work.’”
Arizona has just two senators and at least twice that many residents. Activism is how normal people advocate for policies that matter to them. They can’t afford to buy Sinema’s time at fancy fundraisers.
She doesn’t like civil disobedience, thinks it drives more people away than it attracts. More to the point, Sinema contends, the activists who spend their time noisily berating her in person and online aren’t doing much for the causes they purport to care about.
I am much happier showing a two-year record of incredible achievements that are literally making a difference in people’s lives than sharing my thoughts on Twitter.” She punctuates these last words with the sort of contempt that only someone who’s tweeted more than 17,000 times can feel.
Here are some thoughts Sinema has shared on Twitter:
Sinema called the late Rep. John Lewis — who helped changed the country through civil disobedience — her “hero.” He led sit-ins on gun safety legislation as recently as 2020. In 2015, then-Rep. Sinema cast a symbolic vote for Lewis as speaker of the House. She tweeted, “I voted for John Lewis, my hero. He embodied all that I wished the Congress would be and what I hoped to be — kind, humble, honest, hardworking, and steadfast to his values. A man of principle and courage.”
She is literally none of those things.
While her critics contend that she adjusted her politics to win statewide office in Arizona, she chalks up the evolution to “age and maturity.” She bristles at the idea that politicians shouldn’t be allowed to change their mind. “Imagine a world in which everybody who represented you refused to grow or change or learn if presented with new information,” she tells me. “That’s very dangerous for our democracy. So perhaps what I’m most proud of is that I’m a lifelong learner.”
The Senator, who you totally shouldn’t mistake for dumb, hasn’t seemed to learn that while Cruz and Hawley have nothing but contempt for the Left, they never openly reject their own voters. They spend a great deal of time connecting with them, pretending they are one of them, not their superiors.
Cruz personally met with members of the “People’s Convoy” truckers protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and most weren’t even his own constituents. He treated them like heroes not losers. He talks about (likely imaginary) working stiffs praising him and thanking him for his service. He is a better retail politician than Sinema. God help us, so is Sinema’s potential Republican Senate opponent Lake, who often speaks collectively about “our movement.”
Here’s some more of Sinema’s bullshit:
She says she’s guided by an unchanging set of “values”—she mentions freedom, opportunity, and security—that virtually all Americans share. When it comes to legislating, Sinema sees herself as “practical”—a dealmaker, a problem solver. And if taking every policy question on a case-by-case basis bewilders some in Washington, Sinema says it’s just her nature. Even in her private life, she tells me, she’s prone to slow, painstaking deliberation. I ask for an example.
“It took me eight years to decide what to get for my first tattoo,” she offers.
So what did you decide on? I ask.
“I don’t actually want to share that.”
She brought up the damn tattoo! What the hell is wrong with her?
“I’m not only a senator,” she tells me. “I’m also lots of other things.”
Oh, that’s what’s wrong with her.
I ask if she worries about what lessons will be drawn in Washington if her independent turn leads to the end of her political career.
She pauses and answers with a smirk: “I don’t worry about hypotheticals.”
Kyrsten Sinema acts like some tough-as-nails CEO who lays off thousands of people with a smirk. That’s a fine personal brand if you only have to answer to wealthy shareholders not normal human voters, but there’s nothing hypothetical about Sinema’s fate next November.
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