Is the Biden White House looking to drive Kyrsten Sinema out of the Democratic Party? That would seem to be the unsubtle subtext of an Axios report excerpting a new book by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns. The report is full of things obviously sourced from inside the Biden inner circle that read as potshots at Sinema for deviating from the party line:
“One person close to the president likened Biden’s perplexity at Sinema to his difficulty grasping his grandchildren’s use of . . . TikTok. He wanted to relate, but he just didn’t quite get it.” . . . In the spring of 2021, “she became the first-ever lawmaker to argue with White House aides when they asked her to wear a face mask in the company of the president, repeatedly asking why that was necessary when she had been vaccinated.” . . .
Biden aides complained that Sinema sounded more like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) than a Democrat. . . . She mocked Biden while speaking warmly about House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, and even defending far-right Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who denied the election results and claimed Antifa had infiltrated the Capitol riot. “I love Andy Biggs,” she said. “I know some people think he’s crazy, but that’s just because they don’t know him.” Separately, Sinema told colleagues five or six other Senate Dem moderates were “hiding behind my skirt” as she pushed back on the left.
Quotes such as these do not simply appear; someone has to decide to offer them to the reporters. (Whether they are true is beside the point; the fact that they were said to reporters is a story in and of itself.) It is, of course, not news that progressives are furious at Sinema and Joe Manchin for obstructing their plans to bulldoze the filibuster, pass a colossal takeover of voting and elections laws, and spend trillions of dollars in a mad rush while the Democrats have, momentarily, 50 senators and control of the House and the presidency. That ire, in Manchin’s case, is at least tempered by the reality that Manchin represents the second-reddest state in the country, so a purge or primary challenge is certain to replace him with a Republican. But Arizona is a purple state, won narrowly both by Biden and by standard-issue Democrat Mark Kelly in 2020. Many progressives believe that they can do better than Sinema.
Progressives are pushing Congressman Ruben Gallego to launch a primary challenge to Sinema in 2024. Staffers at a Democratic consulting firm have reportedly been up in arms at working for Sinema, with anonymous staffers telling Politico “I am doing the devils work,” “I feel sick about it,” and “it doesn’t seem like anyone is comfortable working on her account at this point.” Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York called Kyrsten Sinema a “traitor” to “our democracy,” and former Iowa Democratic congresswoman Abby Finkenauer, who is running for the Senate, called Sinema a “sellout.” Activists disrupted a wedding Sinema officiated, ignoring the tearful pleas of the bride’s mother. When an activist mob followed Sinema into the bathroom at an appearance, Biden sniffed that “it happens to everybody . . . it’s part of the process.”
Refusing to call off the left-wing dogs is one thing, however; it is another thing entirely for your own people to signal that Sinema belongs with the Republicans: that she “sounded more like Romney,” defended Biggs, was closer with McCarthy than with Biden, and (horrors!) refused to wear a mask around Biden while vaccinated. That raises the possibility that Biden, often compared by his flatterers to Franklin D. Roosevelt, will imitate FDR’s disastrous 1938 effort to purge his party’s conservatives. For now, there is still a rational restraint on doing that: Sinema’s vote is essential to Chuck Schumer’s controlling the Senate and to confirming Biden-nominated judges and executive appointees. But if Democrats lose the Senate in 2022, it may well be that the emotional lash-out will begin, with Sinema as the top target.
There is some rationale for that: It makes sense for a party to purge its congressional miscreants and try to replace its less reliable elements while it is out of power on the Hill and does not need to hold together voting coalitions. But that also assumes that purging Sinema is worth the risk. If Republicans unseat Kelly and retain control of Arizona’s statehouse and legislature this November, saner Democrats may question whether dumping Sinema could hand her seat back to Republicans as well.
That kind of caution already seems to be lacking. Retiring Representative Stephanie Murphy’s (D., Fla.) gave a blistering interview to Politico about how moderate House Democrats are treated not only by progressive activists but also by their leadership, which seems incapable of saying no to the angry online Left:
“My first term . . . there was a lot more tolerance for, ‘Do what you need to do to hold your seat, and come back because we’re trying to build towards [a] majority,’” Murphy said. “With us being in the majority, that tolerance eroded a bit. It’s unfortunate, because I think in order for us as Democrats to hold the majority, you have to be able to win in seats like mine and in redder seats. That means you have to cut your members a little bit of leeway to vote their district. This march towards party unity is going to be detrimental to our ability to lead.” . . .
Some on the left accused her of being “anti-immigrant” for backing the GOP-authored “Kate’s Law,” a proposal to increase penalties on people who are convicted of crimes, are deported and reenter the U.S. illegally. . . . But it got worse when it came to trying to pass Biden’s agenda, and what Murphy called an effort by leadership to “beat moderates into submission.” “I can’t tell you the number of times I said, ‘You can’t keep promising rainbows and unicorns when your political reality is such narrow margins in the House and a dead-even Senate,’” said Murphy. “They took the difference between rainbows and unicorns and political reality — which is anger and disappointment — and turned that anger and disappointment against their own members.”
Murphy suspects that Dem leaders were encouraging outside-group attacks on vulnerable members like herself for wanting to separate the Build Back Better agenda from the infrastructure bill. “[A] lot of these outside groups that purport to represent a specific interest are just an extension of leadership,” Murphy said. “Instead of purely focusing on their issue area, they bleed into just advocating for whatever Democratic leadership wants.” She fumed that the entire idea of allies going after Democrats ahead of a tough election year was mind-boggling. “I told those groups, ‘For every dollar that you spend against me, it’s going to take 10 to repair that.’”
The left-wing suicide machine, once activated, lacks the internal logic to shut itself off. Biden was supposed to be the wise old institutionalist who could provide adult supervision to this kind of behavior. Instead, it looks as if he will simply let his own staff join in the circular firing squad to vent their rage for the next two and a half years. That seems a poor way to approach the electoral reckonings in 2022 and 2024.