UNDERSTANDING KYRSTEN SINEMA

Twelve years ago, this is what Senator Kyrsten Sinema had to say about the important political act of cooperation to achieve progress:

“When we let go of our attachment to specific outcomes and instead focus on our shared values, we can think creatively about solutions to the many problems we face today. Articulating our interests, rather than our positions, creates the space for each of us to consider new alternatives, new options, and new ways to reach our collective goal.”

—Kyrsten Sinema, Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win—and Last, 2009

Her actual practice of what she wrote about is somewhat different.

Donna Edwards, former congresswoman from Maryland, now an MSNBC contributor, gave a useful insight to Sinema last week when she described her experience working with the Arizonan in the House before she ran for the Senate. “She seemed to consider her friendships with Republicans to be more important than any relationships with us, her fellow Democrats, and went out of her way to let us know she was taking meetings with the other side during negotiations.

Lawrence O’Donnell, a veteran senior Senate staffer, and Adam Jentleson, who was formerly Chief of Staff to Senator Harry Reid, both commented this week about how Sinema has no veteran Senate staffer on her own staff to provide any experience and guidance, and that none of the staff she brought with her has much experience in Washington politics at all, which is no help to a Senator who has only been in that role for a bit over two years of her first term, and who has never demonstrated any interest in learning about the Senate since her arrival. “Having no one there to help her, and no one there anyone else can talk with, makes working with her very difficult,” Jentleson said.

According to her Creation Story, Sinema’s career arc goes from left-wing agitator to leading promoter of compromise. But it doesn’t take much review of her to know that’s not true, and anybody following the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill can see. Joe Manchin may be someone we disagree with, but he’s there negotiating (and he had some excellent advice yesterday to some protesters: “If you want all this, go elect some more people who will do it.”) Sinema, on the other hand, has never publicly said anything about why she is in opposition, and in the midst of the most important weeks in the history of the republic, she flew off to Arizona for a “doctor’s appointmen” - and a meeting with donors. This on top of the meeting she had with donors in DC - all of whom are opposed to the Build Back Better Bill.

Examining her history, with some political knowledge of what pops up, will go a long way to explaining her..

In 2000, Sinema couldn’t stomach Al Gore, so she supported Ralph Nader. This is important! Those old enough to have dodged Tyrannosaurs on their way to school will recall that Nader got into the 2000 race saying he did so because “there’s no difference” between the two parties. In the final weeks of the campaign, when the outcome was seen as being very close, he was asked if he would withdraw so as not to take votes from the candidate whose policies were obviously closer to his. He said no. After the Florida Fisaco, he said he had done the right thing, to “give people a real choice. This is who she supported, what she thought was important in her first political involvement.

Examining the ego of Ralph Nader and the ego of Kyrsten Sinema, one is reminded of the old saying, “birds of a feather, flock together.”

After Nader, she became involved with the Green Party. That’s also an “Indicator” as they say. The Greens are a part of “the left” who oppose “reformist incrementalism” because they see the problem as being too big for mere reform solving it. Many of the former Marxist-Leninists who were among the party’s creators subscribe to Lenin’s dictum that one must “increase the contradictions” in order to demonstrate to “the people” that revolution is the only solution. This belief in increasing the contradictions is why the various Communist Parties in Europe during the period between the wars saw the Social Democratic parties in their respective countries as their main opponents. If the “reformists” were successful, “the people” might come to believe that “the system” is salvageable. In 1932, the German Communists ran against the Social Democrats, calling them “social fascists,” and when people who actually had brains pointed out that if the Communists were successful in their campaign, they would assure a Nazi victory, the Communsits assured them that such a victory would “speed the revolution.” We all know how well that worked out.

“Speed the revolution” is a set of words one frequently hears coming from the mouths of Greens. In 2016, questioned about whether her political advocacy might harm to campaign of Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump,. Susan Sarandon airily dismissed the question by opining that a Trump victory would “speed the revolution.” Jill Stein, the Green candidate for president that year, used the same words - “speed the revolution” - when she was questioned about the political viability of her campaign.

It has been documented in several instances that Greens have taken money from Republicans to finance campaigns where their presence on the ticket will split the anti-Republican vote, without any chance of the Green being victorious. They’re fine with spoiling the campaign of the “mere reformer” so that “the people” will see that reform is useless when the Republican wins and does with the victory what Republicans do.

Jill Stein actually did this in 2016. She took money from Putin! She attended the same Kremlin dinner as Putin’s guest that Michael Flynn did. When she was questioned about having Russian support - which she returned by advocating policies even more favorable to Putin than what Trump was advocating, she poo-pooed any Russian influence on her campaign, and then said that a Republican victory would increase the contradictions and “speed the revolution.”

Are you starting to see a pattern?

Sinema’s campaign for Phoenix city council as a Green “bomb thrower” (her term) was a failure. She took no political donations, claiming they are “bribery.” In 2011, she tweeted, “Asking big corporations & the rich to pay their fair share is common sense not class warfare.”

Today, she is attending a donor event to take money from “corporations & the rich” who are there to support her because they don’t want to “pay their fair share.” And she’s fine with taking their money and doing their bidding.

Sinema “transformed” herself in 2005 from “Green bomb thrower” to “practical Democrat,” and won her race. Once there, she was remembered by fellow Democrats as being far more interested in making friends with Republicans than forming any relationships with her fellow Democrats, and she went out of her way to vote against policies and programs the Democrats were advocating.

Because “reform” will never “solve the problem” and “increasing the contradictions” is necessary so “the people” will come to see that the only solution is revolution.

Like Nader, Sinema is a narcissist. Like all narcissists, she operates on the theory “What’s good for me, is good.”

What she’s doing in classic Green ultra-leftism: go after the “mere reformers” so they fail with their failure educating “the people” and all this will “speed the revolution.”

These people don’t know how to create, but they damn well do know how to destroy.

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