Kyrsten Sinema and the 'Centrist' Double-Standard
Progressives are often labeled a liability even when they’re clearly an asset
When Joe Manchin announced last week that he would vote against the Democrats’ sweeping voting rights bill and refuse to weaken the filibuster, progressives were understandably irate but hardly surprised. After all, we’re talking about Manchin, a life-long centrist from deep red West Virginia. No reasonable progressive can expect much from him, right?
That is, at least, the narrative we hear from the media and political elites. As the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen put it, “In resisting their radical agenda, Manchin is simply representing his constituents. West Virginia is one of the reddest states in the country…” A dive into West Virginia’s demographics in the New York Times concluded, “it’s hard to understand how Mr. Manchin is a Democratic senator at all in today’s polarized era.”
On the one hand, it’s hard to argue with the underlying assumption that Manchin is not going to stick his head out for progressive policies that not even all blue-state Democrats are on board with. Incentives are real, and with the slimmest possible majority in the Senate, it would be foolish to ignore the political realities facing all 50 Democratic senators. But on the other hand, it’s frustrating to watch as another centrist Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, receives all the same political cover as Manchin despite facing an entirely different set of incentives—and it calls into question whether some more sinister biases are at work.
A recent CNN piece laid out the situation nicely: Sinema, who ran as a progressive and benefitted from a historic demographic wave pushing Arizona to the left, is now turning a blind eye to the same forces that put her in power. As one progressive organizer who worked to elect Sinema put it, “What has happened is a complete slap in the face to our members, to the work they have done and to the change that they are trying to make in our communities.” The disappointment runs deep: the same organizers who worked to elect Sinema have now established a super PAC devoted to unseating her.
In any normal scenario, these developments would set off alarm bells. Generally, it’s not considered great politics to piss off the activists and groups of voters that were most responsible for your victory. Indeed, without the help of progressive activists, it is hard to see how Sinema gets reelected in a state she won by just over 3% in 2018. As Dan Pfieffer notes in his newsletter, “if Sinema stays on this trajectory, she is in profound trouble in either a primary or the general election.”
But this is rarely the picture we see of Sinema. Instead of being painted a reckless political actor on the verge of defeat, Sinema is often hailed as a “maverick” in the mold of late-Senator John McCain. Sinema, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, is also now one of the head negotiators with President Biden regarding an infrastructure bill. With Sinema, perception is reality: despite doing everything she can to push herself into political peril, she is treated as a rational kingmaker worthy of wielding immense power.
This dynamic would be easier to accept if it were not for the obvious fact that, if the shoe were on the other foot, the result would be entirely different. If, say, Manchin decided to throw up his hands and nuke the filibuster, the mainstream media and leading Democrats would consider him a dead man walking. There would be wall-to-wall coverage of his impending political downfall. Far from becoming a leading negotiator on behalf of progressives, Manchin would almost certainly be thanked for his services and then deemed persona non grata. We’d probably even see a swarm of op-eds warning that Manchin’s about-face is likely to turn off moderates who will surely now lose faith in the Democrats’ appetite for compromise.
Such is the nature of how progressivism is viewed in our political climate: it is often a liability but rarely an asset. Progressive members of Congress, for example, have for weeks been warning that President Biden cannot rely on their votes for a significantly watered-down infrastructure bill. But bipartisan negotiations—now led in part by Sinema—have plowed ahead, and Democratic leaders are insistent on keeping them alive even as they prepare a second infrastructure bill designed to pass through reconciliation without any Republican support. If you’re confused by the hodgepodge approach of empowering moderates while simultaneously undercutting them, you’re not alone.
When a red state Democrat is asked to join the party on the most crucial issues, the left is deemed politically delusional. But when a purple state Democrat bucks the activists who fueled her victory, she’s offered a key negotiating position and is hailed as a passionate rebel. The message to progressives is simple: you’re help in campaigning is welcome, but your input on policy is destructive.
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