The long knives are out for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema over her continued obstruction of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda.
The second week of work has ended and both sides appear to not be close to a deal. One would also need to be reached with Senator Joe Manchin. While she was on her European fund-raising trip, the Arizona senator had been telling the White House the cold shoulder. And it’s her fundraising practices that are now forming the centerpiece of the pressure campaign against her.
CNN’s K-File, which exists to dig up dirt to help Democrats politically, shared a Politico hit yesterday that detailed how much money she’s gotten from “pharma” and “finance.”
Politico: Sinema invests heavily in Pharma and Finance Cash during reconciliation negotiations
https://t.co/SlpYOCuZc4 pic.twitter.com/Kl7jmZCd2E
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) October 15, 2021
What’s so great about this attack is that it relies on the laughable assumption that the other 48 Democrat senators who are on board with Biden’s $3.5 trillion boondoggle bill don’t also have donations from the finance and pharmaceutical sectors. Heck, Sen. Jon Ossoff was Wall Street’s #1 man during the 2020 election (which culminated in a 2021 run-off in Georgia). Nothing Sinema is doing is out of the ordinary, but the insinuation here is that she’s being bought off, and we all know how much the left hates “dark money” — unless it’s being spent on them.
However, you don’t know what the ruthless and relentless press she is subject to to get her to sign on with Joe Biden & Bernie Sanders can accomplish. It will accomplish absolutely nothing.
Sinema doesn’t care about what the left thinks. This has been clear not only in the past month but also back in summer when pushes to end filibuster heated up. Her acute awareness of the nature and effects of leverage is evident. Sinema has everything, her adversaries have nothing. It’s really that simple. She will not bow to the demands of the left if they attack her. This is where the stupidity of a Democrat comes in handy.
The real question is how much abuse she’s willing to take before she does something drastic, like becoming independent. She’d clean up in Arizona under that banner, in my opinion, given her cross-party appeal. This would likely be too much for her opponents. Sinema likes to be the maverick of her party and she can’t leave it. I believe she remains, which causes more problems for the far-left than she does the present.