Sinema, Haley, and the end of hope
At least for this election cycle.
I was struck by, and bothered by, something Kyrsten Sinema said in announcing that she wouldn’t run for re-election this year: “I believe in my approach. But it’s not what America wants right now.”
Elections, however, are how we find out what the body politic wants. By not running, Sinema is removing her approach – pragmatic, bipartisan problem-solving – as an option for Arizona voters before they have the opportunity to accept or reject it.
I believe that she had a better chance in a three-way race with Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake than the polls were indicating and other pundits proclaimed. She has a remarkable record of producing tangible results and benefits for the state, and plenty of local leaders who would testify to her effectiveness. I’m not a bring-home-the-bacon fan. But it is still a powerful political pitch.
There would have been a useful contrast to be drawn with both Gallego and Lake. If Republicans take over the Senate, as widely predicted, Gallego will be irrelevant. If Democrats control either chamber of Congress or the presidency, Lake will be irrelevant. Sinema would be relevant, and a force, irrespective of what party-control configuration emerges from the 2024 election.
In reality, Sinema fits today’s Arizona electorate far better than either Gallego or Lake. As the campaign progressed, the communication of that reality could have moved voter sentiment, and perhaps substantially.
Sinema might have personal reasons not to want to run for re-election, particularly in an uphill challenge against two opponents with a taste for personal invective. But Arizona voters haven’t rejected her approach. In fact, her approach has led to a revival of Democratic fortunes in statewide races, as other Democratic candidates imitate the political playbook that led to her breakthrough victory in the 2018 U.S. Senate race.
Of course, Sinema is no longer a Democrat. Progressives hounded her out of the party.
There is extensive focus, completely justified, on how the drive for purity is depreciating the Republican Party’s general election prospects. But Sinema is an example of the same thing happening in the Democratic Party.
If Sinema were the Democratic nominee, she would be highly likely to defeat Lake soundly. Lake has a decent chance against Gallego. She wouldn’t have had much of one against Sinema.
So, by chasing Sinema out of the party, progressive Democrats have turned a relatively safe Democratic seat into a toss up, during a year in which the electoral map tilts strongly against them. If the status quo prevails everywhere else, winning just Sinema’s seat in Arizona and Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia would be enough to give Republicans control of the Senate.
While Sinema’s brand is as a pragmatic, bipartisan problem-solver, she is very much on the liberal side of the political spectrum. She may have dialed back President Biden’s Build Back Better blueprint, but what passed with her support was still a massive increased investment in clean energy, other elements of industrial policy, and healthcare. Her infrastructure bill featured massive spending on virtually everything under the Sun.
The sin for which progressives chased Sinema out of the party was her unwillingness to abolish the filibuster rule to pass some progressive priorities, such as nationalizing election procedures.
If Republicans take over the Senate, do you think progressives will still be hollering to do away with the filibuster? What Democratic senators will do is entirely predictable. They will go from denouncing the filibuster as an anti-democratic obstacle to progress to hailing it as a hallowed tradition which respect for the institution requires preserving.
Maybe some of them will even whisper a belated thank you to Sinema.
I don’t have a problem with Nikki Haley suspending her campaign for president. Whatever value her continued candidacy provided as a means of expressing and documenting dissent against Donald Trump had run its course.
As she pointed out after New Hampshire, while that dissent wasn’t a majority in Republican primaries, it wasn’t politically inconsequential.
In dropping out, Haley said that it was up to Trump to “earn” the support of that not inconsequential cohort of voters who had supported her. That misstates the current political dynamic.
For the most part, the Haley vote wasn’t from people who simply preferred her to Trump. The Haley vote in large measure represented a rejection of Trump and Trumpism. The rejection is in part to the way Trump plays politics. In significant part to his attempted coup in 2020 and continued efforts to unjustifiably undermine confidence in the integrity of American elections. And fear of what he might attempt in a second term.
At this point, there’s nothing that Trump can do to “earn” the support of this right-leaning slice of the electorate. Not that he would be willing to make the effort anyway. Their rejection of Trump and Trumpism is baked into this year’s election.
However, it is asking a lot of this slice of right-leaning voters to cast a ballot for Joe Biden as an expression of their rejection of Trump and Trumpism. As in Arizona, it is asking a lot to ask the same slice of right-leaning voters to cast a ballot for Gallego to express their rejection of Lake, the way she practices politics, and her cultish devotion to Trump and Trumpism.
I would guess that, in Arizona, this describes around 5 to 10 percent of the general election electorate. How they resolve this dilemma will likely determine who represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate. And maybe who is president of the United States.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.