Photo: Gage Sizemore
Opinion: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been excoriated for working with others, but she is about the ony Democrat in D.C. to accomplish anything.
U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has been at the center of bipartisan infrastructure and gun deals.
By Phil Boas | Arizona Republic
Someday when our current political hostilities are over and the smoke has cleared, remember that U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was probably the most reviled leader in the country.
Remember that East Coast newspapers, presumed sophisticated and urbane, mocked the way she dressed and wore her hair. That progressive activists followed her into a women’s restroom and actually filmed her as she entered a stall.
If these weren’t indignities enough, remember that members of her own party casually scolded her, a person of real influence, as if she were some misbehaving child.
Sinema has been jabbed, parodied by the left
“(The president’s agenda won’t move forward) until Sen. Sinema stops being cute, and starts doing her job,” said Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). She lacks “basic competence or good faith,” said California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders accused her of “sabotaging” the White House budget, and a former deputy chief of staff from the Obama White House called her “a c—.”
Democratic Party money raisers began plotting her defeat in the distant 2024 primary. The abortion rights groups Emily’s List and NARAL pulled their support. The Arizona Democratic Party censured her, and the co-founder and vice president of a big-dollar liberal political organization suggested she is a corporate shill.
Civil Rights leaders said they were “pissed” at her for not abolishing the legislative filibuster, and a Black congresswoman said she had embraced “the racist legacy of Jim Crow.”
She’s ‘going to get … people killed,’ one wrote
The hepcats on “Saturday Night Live” made fun of her looks: “Is it just me or does she look like all the characters from Scooby Doo at the same time?” Then they sniggered that “as a wine-drinking bisexual triathlete” she obviously knows “what America wants.”
The stereotype was catching. The Atlantic magazine put it this way: “The wig-wearing triathlete senator from Arizona has quickly become one of the most hated figures in present-day American politics.” Joy Behar on ABC’s “The View” called her an “enemy of democracy.” Salon simply called her a “snake in the grass.”
NBC News ran an op-ed that argued Sinema is “the worst kind of bisexual stereotype.”
“As a bisexual woman … I now cringe every time the senator makes the headlines,” wrote author Lux Alptraum. “(She’s) a self-absorbed Democratic turncoat more fixated on getting attention and lining her own pockets than uplifting her community.”
The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff wrote she is an “extremist” blocking progress on climate change, and that she is “going to get a lot of people killed.” And New York Magazine’s Sarah Jones said she is “sacrificing” no less than “the future itself.”
