In the Arizona Republic, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announces that she is leaving the Democratic Party and will register as an independent.
I have two initial thoughts on this. The first is that this does represent a repudiation of sorts of the Democratic Party. Sinema is not becoming a Republican, because, on a whole bunch of dealbreaker issues, she’s not a Republican. And, in her op-ed, she hits both sides equally: “My approach is rare in Washington and has upset partisans in both parties,” she suggests. “I have never fit perfectly in either national party. ” But there is no getting away from the fact that she was a Democrat, and now she’s not. When she writes that she does not “subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold,” she’s effectively criticizing the Democrats. When she complains about “party pressure,” she’s talking about the Democrats. When she gripes about “extreme partisans and ideologues,” she’s saying that she cannot be a part of the party to which she previously belonged. We already knew that Sinema thought these things of Republicans. That’s why she ran against them. Now, we know that she thinks them of the Democrats, too.
The second thought is that, depending on what Sinema does, this might not make a big difference in the Senate. It’s possible that Sinema will become a genuine independent in the Senate, and caucus with neither party. Indeed, it’s possible that she waited to do this until the Democrats had 51 votes, so that leaving the party would allow her to maneuver as she sees fit without depriving the Democrats of their control. If, however, she merely means that she’s going to be an independent in the way that Bernie Sanders and Angus King are — that is, to be a Democrat who pretends not to be a Democrat — it won’t affect anything procedurally or otherwise. Sinema was already unwilling to back everything her party threw at her, and she was already unwilling to consent to abolishing the filibuster. If she changes her party registration, caucuses as usual, and keeps that rebellious streak up, nothing much will change at all.