Opinion: It’s not just Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s position on the filibuster and voting rights legislation that those of us who once believed in her have come to detest.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema won’t nuke the filibuster to protect America’s democracy.
That’ll be her legacy, which we knew long before her political performance on Thursday when she talked from both sides of her mouth about voting rights legislation.
The Arizona Democrat brazenly brushed off President Biden’s push to soften the filibuster rules to get that specific legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
All her talk about supporting the House-approved bill that makes Election Day a national holiday and expands new mail-in voting, among other things, was nothing more than her way of slowly plunging the dagger into the heart of it.
“While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” she boasted in the Senate floor.
That’s rich, considering the “underlying disease of division” is precisely the Republican-led attack on democracy that is sowing distrust on elections and pushing for all sorts of voting restrictions across the country.
We do have power over Sinema, at the ballot box
It’s not just her position on the filibuster that many of us who foolishly believed in her have come to detest: It’s the arrogance, the disdain for ordinary folks and her penchant to make everything about her.
Is there anything left to say about Sinema, then? Aren’t we better off just shutting the hell up, as some suggest, and let her be since she holds the power, anyway?
Heck no.
Sure. Sinema currently has the power and any thought that she could be reasoned with is just an illusion.
But nothing and no one is forever – not even the all-powerful Sinema.
It’s worth remembering that and the fact that Sinema’s power begins and ends at the ballot box.
Elvia Díaz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1.
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