The sorry spectacle of Arizona United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema seeking refuge from angry constituents in a toilet stall—has to be an image for the ages—in Arizona and in American politics.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a well-worn doormat for Republican minority-leader Mitch McConnell, and just about every other Senator, groused that protestors who chased Sen. Sinema into a public restroom were “over the line.”
The restroom incident happened at Arizona State University. The faculty and staff of Arizona State rank in the Top Five campaign contributor groups for Sinema in the past decade.
Schumer needs to pay attention
Where has Schumer, the fearful Senate rabbit, been while Sinema has systematically betrayed her Democrat constituents, the ones who voted her into office in 2018 because they believed her campaign rhetoric?
She made a smart-ass curtsy as she voted No on raising the national minimum wage. Arizona has a lot of minimum-wage workers who were counting on her.
So what? Sinema got a hefty campaign contribution from the payday lending lobby a few days after she voted against raising the minimum wage.
If Schumer has done anything to politically discipline Sinema or politically muscle her to represent the people who elected her, it’s a well-kept secret.
Mitch McConnell has been wiping his feet on Schumer for a long time. If Schumer was a real leader with a backbone and skill at political maneuvering, frustrated Democratic voters wouldn’t have to chase one of his senators into a restroom.
If Sinema had integrity and viable answers for what appears to be her betrayal of the people who elected her, she wouldn’t hide in toilets or dodge reporters’ questions at every turn.
Her apologists in the right-wing media like to call her independent, iconoclastic, a renegade.
From the Left some other terms that come to mind are traitor, turncoat, and sell-out.
Lobbyist cash pays off
There is ample evidence of lobbyist payoffs, uh I mean contributions, to Sinema for turning her back on legislation that would help the average voter.
Big Pharma showered Senator Sinema with a 750-thousand-dollar campaign donation.
She paid them back by opposing a Democrat plan to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. The Medicare drug price negotiation plan was estimated to have reduced Big Pharma profits by 450-billion dollars and it would have funded a significant chunk of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
Last July I posted a commentary on YouTube and on my website entitled Kyrsten Sinema, the gum on Democracy’s shoe. Since then, she’s worked tirelessly to prove I’m right. Other reports and commentaries have sharply criticized her, as well.
The Daily Beast said Sinema has made herself into a “Shame to Democrats.”
Politico asserted her calculation is off. They said she is daring the Left to take her out.
New York magazine headlined their story, The Ugly Truth about the Kyrsten Sinema Bathroom Protest. As I’ve argued in this commentary, the magazine stated the Sinema restroom ruckus is, “…a symptom of a much larger problem. When people are shut out of a supposedly democratic process, they have no choice but to agitate.”
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg had a recent OpEd piece headlined “What’s Wrong With Kyrsten Sinema?”
Goldberg notes, “Nobody seems to know what she stands for.”
Regarding Sinema’s delight in being regarded as a maverick, Goldberg wrote, “There’s a difference, it turns out, between being a maverick and being a narcissist.”
While Sinema is acting more like a Trump Republican with every passing day, she has been loudly defended by Trump loyalists Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, two voices for freedom and democracy if ever there were any.
The Kiss of Death?
But Saturday Night Live may have given Sinema the Sarah Palin Kiss of Death.
In 2008 when Palin was the Republican vice-presidential candidate, SNL mocked her into oblivion.
In a recent opening skit, the Sinema character says “I didn’t come to Congress to make friends. And so far, mission accomplished.”
Instead of criticizing Sinema’s protestors, Chuck Schumer, the cowering doormat, AND the party leadership AND Sinema’s inside-the-beltway media apologists, should be asking themselves this: why did young Arizona voters feel frustrated to the point they chased a Democratic senator into a restroom in the first place?
Brilliant, Vince, thank you for this fearless exposure of the Prada Maverick, who stands for nothing but her own cynical ambition, while cowering in toilet stalls when she can’t post her Valley Girl photos flashing her contempt for anyone who once hoped she might represent interests beyond the Chamber of Commerce.
Please continue to unmask her shameless hypocrisy.