Sinema, again: Who will rid us of this small-minded pol who lives among the platitudes in her own fantasies? Arizonans, probably, in 2024.

I know you're tired of her; I am too.

Kyrsten Sinema wants her constituents to believe that getting rid of the filibuster or even carving it out for emergencies, such as protecting the right to vote in America, is a bad idea.

She made an impassioned plea to that effect in the well of the Senate before her president had a chance to speak to all 50 Democratic senators at a Thursday luncheon about the existential importance of passing laws to protect voting rights.

Upstaging a sitting president in your own party is usually not a good move, and wasn’t yesterday, as it showed a hardheadedness and ham-handedness we’ve come to associate with the senior senator from Arizona.

Sinema remains a deadly influence on her country and her party. Her defiance now opens a clear path for Republican vote stealing in the 2022 and 2024 elections, the possible (not inevitable, yet) dissolution of Democratic majority status in both houses in Congress, and the installation of the GOP as the only party that can win elections, both because 20 states are passing anti-democratic legislation and then sending corrupt politicians to Washington through the corrupt system they’ve created…to wreak havoc on presidential vote-certification.

GOP federal congressional representatives from those states can continue to remake electoral standards for counting and certifying the presidential vote—a “soft coup” based on the same beliefs that triggered the violent hard coup attempt of Jan. 6 2021.

And yet, Sinema, tragically, stands stubbornly steadfast without offering any material justification that makes even the slightest amount of sense.

Sinema’s hole-filled logic
So let’s first look at Sinema’s reasons, as put forth in her emotional, pre-Biden luncheon speech yesterday in the Senate. She began with this passage:

“Is my job secure? Can I expand my business? Can we afford college? What about health care? When can I retire? Is my community safe?

Meanwhile, much of Washington’s focus is on a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation.

Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House and the Senate: to be independent — like Arizona — and to work with anyone to achieve lasting results.

Lasting results — rather than temporary victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that America’s families and employers depend on.

The best way to achieve durable, lasting results? Bipartisan
cooperation,” she said.

TRG v. KS
As usual, The Resistant Grandmother wouldn’t be writing about Sinema if I agreed with her. And following is my response to the sun-stroked
sunbelt senator.

Concerns about jobs, business expansion, affording college, health care, retirement, and safe communities are all important. But more important is protecting the fundamental right to vote.

These 20 primarily red or swing state legislatures, including Arizona’s, have in the last year passed or are passing laws that will destroy each stage of the voting process as we know it. Many have gerrymandered voting districts that render Democrats from winning elections in the state virtually impossible, except in urban areas. The voting process itself is now subject to the kind of restrictions that we thought we got rid of in the passage of the voting rights acts of 1964-65. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a list of these voting restrictions includes:

*creating fewer precincts in areas with a majority of brown and black voters, guaranteeing long lines at the polls, making voting impossible for some voters

*making it illegal to stay in lines by providing water or other humane assistance throughout, and because of, the voting ordeal

*assisting voters, like the elderly in nursing homes, from casting their ballots

*shortening the window to apply for a mail-in ballot

*shortening deadlines to deliver ballots

*making it harder to remain on absentee voting lists

*eliminating sending mail-in ballots to voters to encourage voting participation

*restricting assisting in returning mail-in ballots–such as picking them up

from boxes on Native American reservation sites

*limiting down to one or two mail ballot drop boxes in urban areas, such as

Houston’s Harris County with its more than two and a half million

registered voters

*imposing harsher voter ID requirements

*eliminating election day registration

*increasing the number of voters per precinct, guaranteeing long lines at

the polls

*limiting early voting days or hours

A list of GOP vote-stealing measures as far as the eye can see…
Additionally, as in Texas, it’s now illegal for voting officials to object to harassment from so-called voting watchdogs, nothing but hired guns paid for by big Republican donors to intimidate vote counters and certifiers at any point along the process.

Most important, however are the voter nullification laws that remove vote count verification and certification from the hands of elected secretaries of state, like Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, who famously refused Donald Trump’s request he “find” just enough votes to switch Georgia’s electoral counts from Biden to Trump in the 2020 election. Instead, the new laws hand off that responsibility to GOP-appointed election officials reporting to Republican-dominated state legislatures, essentially legalizing election-stealing in those states.

Sinema’s naivete to the contrary, if you cannot, for all intents and purposes, cast your ballot due to a host of impediments created by state legislatures that discourage or not allow you to do so, you have destroyed the very essence of democracy in the United States. 

An even worse pack of faux-“elected” scoundrels awaits their chariots
Sinema’s concern about passing laws on college affordability, helping small businesses, etc. means nothing if Republicans in Congress get their jobs via undemocratic methods.

Election systems that remove or disable candidates from fairly getting elected will pollute the representational system with the kind of con men, sharks, and charlatans who worm their way through a corrupt system to get in. These people will then proceed to create laws about jobs, small businesses, college “affordability,” etc. from now on.

Democracy-killing laws could be rendered illegal through the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that make voting rules that discriminate on the basis of race, language, or ethnicity, again, illegal after the new conservative Supreme Court did away voting protections in the 1964 Voting Act, believing they were no longer needed.

And the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747), currently in the Senate, but held up due to the filibuster, would solidify voter protections such as a minimum of 15 days for early voting, mail-in ballots, and making Election Day a national holiday to encourage voter participation.

The bill would set up national standards for voter identification and protect election officials against intimidation and partisan interference. It would require states to use voting systems with a verifiable paper trail and establish national standards for voter ID. 

A poll conducted by Data for Progress broke down results across party affiliation and found that both a majority, as high as 64 percent in some polls, of both Republicans’ and Democrats’ support such legislation that cannot be voted on because the minority party refuses to allow it to be brought up for
a vote.

OK with Sinema: vote-stealing in perpetuity
To Republicans, using the filibuster to ensure their candidates always get elected has the extended effect of ensuring they can block any legislation that comes up before them in perpetuity.

Sinema’s fealty to the filibuster is even more strange since the Senate is the only Congressional body to retain the 200-year-old procedure. The U.S. House of Representatives led by the razor-thin Republican Party majority in 1891 got rid of it so it could pass the most sweeping democracy reforms since the Civil War, including protections for Black voters.  And ever since, legislation from both parties has made its way through that chamber, just fine.

Sinema: no modifications need apply
And Sinema has not only said “no” to getting rid of the filibuster altogether, but also any modifications that would merely make it more difficult for minority party senators to use it, such as requiring they defend their positions publicly in the chamber instead of just saying “no.”

Another modification she’s rejected is keeping the filibuster but granting an exception for this important reason—saving democracy. An exception was invoked on Dec. 14, 2021 to raise the debt ceiling, and as both parties have done 161 times from 1969 to 2014 and many times in the eight years
since then.

But Sinema and Manchin said no to these reasonable compromises, as well.

You have to wonder, who or what is driving Sinema’s stubborn loyalty to a procedure in our current political situation that promises to wreak havoc on democracy? The wealthy donors she’s courted since her very first days in the Senate? Certainly not Democrats in her state who enabled her 2018 election to the Senate. Now, however, as evidenced by her low 26 percent approval rating dropping steadily over the last year because of this issue, the majority of Arizona Democrats want Sinema out of the job.

Republicans and“bipartisanship” in the era of Trump’s iron grip
At the center of Sinema’s stance is her belief in working across the aisle, a value she latched on to as a member of the minority Democratic Party in Arizona in the early 2000s, a time when bipartisanship remained possible not only in Arizona but in Washington.

But the Republican Party now remains in the iron grip of Donald Trump. Trump sees free and fair voting as a roadblock to his ability to again ascend to the presidency. And so Republicans are doubling down on making sure voting legislation doesn’t even come up for a vote as free elections would threaten Trump’s goal.  

That’s because Trump and Republicans have learned their voter base is shrinking, as older white voters are slowly dying out, as are those encouraged not to protect themselves from Covid. Also the U.S. white population is not growing as quickly as other, browner population groups who traditionally opt to join the Democratic party over the GOP. 

According to a report from the prestigious Cook Partisan Voting Index of December 2020, 49 percent of registered voters identify themselves as Democrats, with only 36 percent describing themselves as Republicans—only one percentage point higher than those who describe themselves as Independents at 35 percent.

A dying GOP’s last gasps: voter suppression
Republicans know it’s getting harder to win elections fairly, so are creating the vast network of anti-voting legislation that declares election winners based simply on GOP party or, more specifically, Trump affiliation.

And Sinema’s stubborn loyalty to the filibuster puts her on their side.

What’s the reason—IQ or $$$?
Since Sinema’s reasons make no sense, we can only assume the Senator may be in the pocket of her big monied donors, an opinion becoming more widely believed in her home state and beyond.

Another option: Sinema’s not bright—which, despite the senator’s years of formal education at Brigham Young (B.A.) and Arizona State (M.A.) universities, The Resistant Grandmother is inclined to believe.

The gas station effect?
Included in a person’s intelligence quotient are his or her emotional sensibilities. Many of us know the Senator had a difficult childhood as her parents went through a messy divorce, followed soon after by her mother’s remarriage and the family’s moving about 1500 miles from Tucson, Arizona to DeFuniak Springs, Florida, a town today with a population of about 6,000. It’s the community from which Sinema’s new stepfather, Andy Howard, a computer teacher, moved to Arizona. And now having married Sinema’s recently divorced mother, Howard was moving his new family back to his
home town.

But with a promised job in Florida falling through shortly after their arrival, Sinema and her family lived for three years in an abandoned gas station on the Howard family’s property. It’s easy to imagine the cruel playground teasing those living conditions may have inspired–the kind of mocking that may have motivated Sinema to become a good student. And she earned co-valedictorian status in her small town high school graduation class.

But I believe these challenges also hardened and twisted Sinema, creating someone without the sensitivity to know—or care—that it’s not a good idea to violate social protocols, like upstaging her president on an important day in his presidency. They may too have seeded a desire for wealth and the power, security, and comfort that goes with it, with Sinema’s succumbing to its influence over time, but especially since she became U.S. Senator.
We may never know.

Bottom line: The Resistant Grandmother is tired of Sinema, having now written five columns exclusively or largely devoted to trying to figure her out and/or change her mind. I’ve also written to her and called her office multiple times, never receiving an acknowledgement. I talked once, politely enough, to a staff member who took my call, but then hung up on me
before I could say goodbye.

It’s been a total waste, just like all of the time Democrats have invested in trying to talk some sense into her.  Sinema remains so far removed from what the vast majority of Americans and Democrats want there appears to be no common ground to get through to her…The walls are just too thick.

Sinema remains an enigma when the current state of our nation calls for just the opposite: a strong, clear-voiced patriot ready to take on all comers to save democracy.

Instead, we have an addled young woman with neither common sense, nor a sense of history who shouldn’t be within ten feet of her current job.

Having researched and written about Sinema over the last six months, I’ve concluded she’s in the wrong business. To The Resistant Grandmother, Sinema would be better off working in the banking industry, running a fitness center, or holding down a job as a functionary in an autocracy where she need not answer or listen to anything or anyone except her own adolescent fantasies. And her warped, terrible, horrible, wrong-headed choices may offer a major impetus to bring that about.