Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are insisting on preserving a Senate obstructionist tactic known as the filibuster. In the current toxic political environment, the filibuster could end our form of government as we know it. Manchin’s senate seat is secure but Kyrsten Sinema is vulnerable. That’s what I want to talk about.
Senator Sinema has become a wad of gum on the shoe of Democracy. As our democratic republic faces the forces of fascism, Sinema is gumming up efforts to save it.
She and Manchin have become the Democrat dunces of the Senate. Sinema has joined Manchin in obstructing legislation and initiatives aimed at repairing our battered and damaged government. Both are adamant about maintaining the so-called filibuster even though they both know Republicans can and will use it as a weapon.
A filibuster is a keep-talking-for-hours-or-days tactic to delay or obstruct a Senate vote on a piece of legislation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell loves the filibuster.
Even though he’s the Minority Leader, McConnell is far more powerful and crafty than Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who seems to be a don’t-fight-back frightened rabbit.
McConnell makes no bones about his intention to use the filibuster to thwart or diminish any important legislation President Joe Biden supports.
President Biden: “I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’ Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively only four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.”
He was referring, of course, to Manchin and Sinema.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema: “The idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before us in the United States Senate to create comity and to encourage senators to find bi-partisanship and work together.”
Sinema’s guiding principle, if she has one, is to indulge her ego and her obvious ignorance of history, ahead of her country.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg was among a considerable list of commentators who said Sinema is just plain wrong. Goldberg wrote:
“This is nonsense. The filibuster was created by mistake when the Senate, cleaning up its rule book in 1806, failed to include a provision to cut off debate…The filibuster encouraged extremism, not comity: It was a favorite tool of pro-slavery senators before the Civil War and segregationists after it.”
The public blow-back against Sinema’s protect-the-filibuster-above-all-else position was so intense she made matters worse by submitting an opinion piece to the Washington Post, re-stating her widely criticized view.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who was once a Senate aide, said: “If her staff wrote the OpEd piece for her, they should be fired because it is full of falsehoods, outright falsehoods in an imaginary world.”
Nowhere in Sinema’s Op-Ed does she acknowledge our system of free and fair voting is under attack by Republican lawmakers in at least 48 states. At least 389 bills have been introduced to suppress voting in one form or another. Senate Republicans will use the filibuster—not bi-partisanship—to block any federal laws that would override the emerging state laws.
In Arizona, one of the nation’s Wild West states, Sinema’s rise to political power is amazing. The State of Arizona officially promotes tourism to celebrate a notorious—and highly-embellished—1881 Old West shootout known as the Gunfight at the OK Corral. It occurred in a town called Tombstone.
In a state with this kind of pride in its macho gunslinger past, Sinema, a self-identified bi-sexual, has campaigned in a pink tutu.
When the questions and criticism sting too much, and Sinema doesn’t have answers, she’s been known to whine that it’s sexism.
Yet, she recently posted a selfie on Twitter, prominently displaying a crude message ring. For those with poor eyesight the ring says, Fuck Off.
Kyrsten Lea Sinema is like Where’s Waldo? in a jigsaw puzzle. Her true agenda is hidden.
Sinema seemed in favor of a full Congressional investigation of the January 6th insurrection, but when it was time for a vote, she was a no-show. She claimed she had a “family issue” that prevented her from voting on this vitally important historic matter. She never explained.
Arizona is a state with many minimum-wage workers, yet she voted against raising the national minimum wage and did a show-boating little curtsy during her vote.
Fat Cat Republicans certainly weren’t upset by her curtsy stunt.
Sinema received nearly $20,000 in PAC donations three days after she voted No on the minimum wage. Among the PACS: The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, the vultures who prey on the wallets of people struggling to get through life on the minimum wage.
Individual donors, which frequently means the super-rich, gave her another $26,600 in the days after she voted No on raising the minimum wage.
Sinema’s betrayal of the Democrats doesn’t stop with campaign cash. Sinema has helped Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump make the federal judiciary a biased branch of our evolving right- wing dictatorship.
Vice reports Kyrsten Sinema is second only to Joe Manchin in voting to approve Trump’s lifetime appointments to the federal courts. The Vice analysis of Senate judicial votes shows Sinema voted for Trump appointees 70% of the time.
This could mean countless hostile rulings against Blacks, Hispanics, women and other minorities.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has long lobbied against reforms on issues like climate change and healthcare, also opposed the increase in the minimum wage. After a minimum wage increase was defeated, the Chamber rewarded friends like Kyrsten Sinema with generous campaign contributions.
President Biden, willing to take slaps in the face in order to get things done, made sure he stroked the egos of Sinema and Manchin by posing them beside him as he announced a bi-partisan infrastructure deal.
The Economist, a British news magazine, likens Sinema to a prickly cactus that is painful for Democrats to embrace. The Economist profile of Sinema says “the hollowness of her grandstanding is depressing.”
Sinema could be compared to flaking paint. You never know what’s beneath the veneer.
Arizona’s LGBTQ community is starting to see beneath the peeling paint.
One hundred and forty activists have sent her an open letter warning her that if she continues to support the filibuster, she risks losing their support and they may find another candidate to support. These activists are on the right track.
I’m urging voters to get Kyrsten Sinema’s attention through the issue all politicians understand: campaign contributions. I’m proposing a grass roots campaign to pressure her donors to quit giving cash to a senator who is willing to put our form of government at risk.
Here’s how to do it:
On my website, vincewade.com, you’ll find this commentary and a link called Direct Action. Click on it.
You will find pages about some, but certainly not all, of Sinema’s biggest donors: who they are, the kind of money they gave her and information on how to make contact by email, phone or even snail mail.
Use this contact information to write and send a brief message pleading that they to stop giving money to Kyrsten Sinema’s re-election war chest.
I would encourage you to contact her donors and keep contacting them over and over. Treat this like a digital chain letter. Encourage your voter friends to get involved in trying to stop the money flowing to Kyrsten Sinema. These protests need to be persuasive, not accusatory or confrontational. We need to ask these people to stop funding Sinema for the good of the country.
This past winter Senator Sinema took a turn presiding over the U.S. Senate. She chose to wear a skin-tight, hot-pink shirt with the words “Dangerous Creature” across her chest.
Arizona and the nation are learning how true that is.
The voters of Arizona have to decide if they want a Dangerous Creature representing them in Washington, or a real Senator.
If they want a Senator, they need to find a solid alternative to Sinema—and soon. In the meantime, voters in Arizona, and across the rest of the nation, can take action NOW by challenging the people who give her money. Go to the Direct Action section of my website to get started.
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