DEAD SENATOR WALKING

After all the disappointment we suffered this week, we can take some comfort in the fact that Kyrsten Sinema’s career in electoral politics is already over.

Dead Senator Walking.

Yes, she’s done a lot of damage, and it’s going to be difficult to remedy. It’s three years to 2024, and she can do more damage. And being a Green at heart, she probably will. But none of that, none of her hijinks, none of the game-playing to come, can change her electoral fate. In political terms, she’s already Dead Senator Walking. Up until this morning, the delightful part of it was that she doesn’t even seem to realize it yet.

However, getting censured by the political party whose support you need for re-election, regardless of how you think you can walk on water, has to be a wake-up. And that just happened this morning. The Arizona Democratic Party censured her for her destructive actions in failing to defend democracy with her vote to sustain the filibuster of voting rights on Wednesday.

I’ve been one to think she is slippery enough she can still survive, but after looking at what’s going on in Arizona, I don’t think so anymore. She is Dead Senator Walking.

How can I be so sure she’s a goner in such an uncertain time? It’s not just the primary challenge, that could end her Senate career on its own. No, her problem is much deeper. She has already made herself essentially unelectable under any game theory; Wednesday was just the capstone.

Let’s start with the the most likely death scene: a primary challenge. While it’s hard to topple an incumbent, even one as unpopular as she is. But her support in Arizona is so catastrophically low that losing a primary is totally plausible. Ohio Predictive Insights found back in a November poll that 72% of Arizona Democratic voters wanted a senator other than Kyrsten Sinema; only 26% favored her. Those are absolutely terrible numbers. The poll tested three plausible primary challenger, and each beat her handily. And that was November, before she helped tank the Build Back Better bill. A Civiqs Poll 10 days ago, before her filibuster disaster, showed Democrats gave her an unimaginably bad 8%, with 80% unfavorable. Three years is forever in politics, but since she’s highly likely to keep flouncing around as she does, there’s a very good chance she will lose a Democratic primary. Representative Ruben Gallegos, a very popular progressive, has already all but announced a challenge after he’s re-elected in November (and his district is safe). There is news that three very powerful Democratic donors (all women) want to have her hide nailed on a door and are willing to finance a successful challenge.

The necessary condition for any Democrat to win a statewide victory in Arizona is a united and energized Democratic party. Then, since the state is only lightly “purple,” you need significant Republican cross-over support and strong independent support. But without the unified and energized party support, the rest doesn’t matter. And there’s basically no chance of her ever getting that back.

A Sinema primary victory in 2024 would be the definition of “pyrrhic,” one that deepened and highlighted intra-party divisions. Since it would be against a challenger more firmly identified with the Democratic party’s priorities, Sinema would have to highlight the traits and actions that spoiled her relationship with the party. She’d have to get Republicans to re-register and vote for her just to mess up their opponents (she she’s exactly the kind of candidate who would do that). It’s always hard to unify a party after a hard-fought primary. For her it would be impossible. Her choices are defeat in a primary or inability to unify the party behind her in a way that makes a general election victory plausible if she won a primary.

Lots of people, myself recently included, thought she could declare herself independent and run outside the party system.

There are two Senators who did that: get rejected by their respective party, and then win with an independent campaign: Joe Lieberman in 2006 and Lisa Murkowski’s write-in Republican campaign in 2010.

In both successful cases, the state electorate was state heavily weighted toward the candidate who made the independent run. Connecticut is a very Democratic state, and Connecticut Republicans knew winning a Senate seat was at best a longshot. They supported Lieberman run as the de facto Republican candidate for partisan score settling against the Democratic party in New Jersey, and to get the most conservative candidate available. Murkowski was popular with moderate Republicans, independents, and Democrats who knew they couldn’t win and supported the best candidate available. Sinema lacks either advantage. Democrats don’t like her, and the Republicans want the seat for themselves and, not unreasonably, think they can win it on their own.

As much as progressives didn’t like Lieberman, his actual voting record on most issues - outside of hawkishness on foreign policy - was fairly conventionally Democratic; most Democrats didn’t have a real beef with him. Today is vastly more politicized. Sinema hasn’t just failed to be a loyal Democrat or hew an ideological line. She was happy to flounce into the Senate chamber and turn “thumbs down” on raising the minimum wage; she has positively basked in the glow of cratering President Biden’s legislative agenda. She’s embraced that role!

If you are a Democrat even vaguely focused on politics, you know this. And if you are a Democrat disappointed at what Democrats have failed to accomplish in 2021, Sinema has practically invited every Democrat to blame her for the situation. Yes, Manchin gets blamed too. But since most it’s recognized that he comes from an extremely pro-Trump state, there is logic to what he does. That is absolutely not the case with Sinema, which makes her behavior even more inexplicable and maddening for the voters she needs.

I thought she was so unprincipled she could turn Republican, but even with her egomania that doesn’t work. She could become a Republican for the remainder of her term, but she can’t win reelection as a Republican. She’s pro-choice; publicly, affirmatively, irreligious; openly bisexual. In other words, she flunks the three main hot-button culture-war issues one has to have to be a Republican. There’s no place for her in that party - certainly not in its Trumpiest-of-the-Trumpiest iteration, run by the crazies running the Arizona Party now. Thus, she has no way to win a Republican primary. There’s too many Arizona Republicans who want that seat, and the state’s Republican voters aren’t about to vote for anything but “a real one.”

Sinema has repeatedly tried to make herself the new John McCain, the maverick who bucked party but had cross party support. What she fails to understand is that McCain only ever bucked his party on the big stuff one time: the Obamacare repeal - when he knew he had only months to live. McCain’s personal myth which, even if like me you think was overblown, was based on genuine heroism and suffering. Regardless of its reality, the myth gave him a reservoir of good will across the both sides of the political aisle, which gave him substantial room to maneuver politically. Sinema has none of that. She simply has no reservoir of good will to fall back on. She’s now seen as a traitor to the party that supported her and put her in office.

Arizona Republicans may love watching her cripple Joe Biden’s presidency - she has a high 48% favorability among Arizona Republicans - but only 21% said they’d vote for her. Then there is the fact she is very unpopular with Arizona independents - less than with Democrats or Republicans! You have to work at it to do this badly and she has done so. Sinema’s support tanked with independents same time it did with Democrats: when she positioned herself as the thorn in the side of President Biden’s agenda. Independents don’t see any logic or value in Sinema’s actions either.

The numbers tell the story: Only those voters invested in hurting Democrats like her. And she can only play that role for Republicans as long as she remains a Democrat.

She has clearly demonstrated a lack of principles, so there is no way of positioning herself as the “Democratic Liz Cheney.” Whatever one thinks of her otherwise-conventional Conservative Republican politics, Cheney is doing what she is from principle.

There is no way for Sinema to turn things around by championing issues and bills, since if the Democrats lose the House this fall, there will be no legislating until 2025 at the earliest. To date, she has shown no inclination to repair any of the damage. She has done immense damage to both the president and her party, without any meaningful justification or benign intent. Her antics have created a situation where it will be difficult for any Democrat to hold that seat in 2024.

But Sinema herself is done. Dead Senator Walking. She’s done it without even seeming to know it, high on her own supply of “maverick” fantasies and fluffing by the lobbyists she now pays attention to.

This stilly, unserious, ridiculous moron, too stupid to even know she should try to ”act senatorial,” has kicked herself to the curb and doesn’t even realize it.

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