Tangle - The Kyrsten Sinema drama.

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

The Arizona Democrat has been getting more and more attention as the debate over how to move forward on Joe Biden's agenda continues. While Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has owned much of the spotlight as a "moderate" or "conservative" Democrat who needs to be won over to advance some of Biden's top priorities, Sinema has frequently joined him as a pillar of opposition to some of Biden's largest spending plans.Attention on Sinema has reached a fever pitch in the last few days after several public encounters with protesters who are trying to pressure her into voting for Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss those protests and the commentary on Sinema from across the media world.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are talking about Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator who has been causing quite a bit of controversy and been the subject of a lot of headlines in the last few days. Before we jump in, as always, we've got some quick hits from the news. First off, and this is a pretty big developing story, former President Donald Trump was apparently talked out of making an early announcement for the 2024 presidential race, but has told advisers he is planning to run. Trump made the decision not to make the announcement because it would complicate some of his current fundraising plans, but it sounds like he might be throwing his hat in the ring.

some of his current fundraising plans, but it sounds like he might be throwing his hat in the ring. Number two, major outages of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp disrupted the internet yesterday. Number three, the Supreme Court of the United States began its fall term yesterday, beginning what might be the most historic term of the last few decades. Number four, the Pfizer vaccine is 90% effective against hospitalization and death after six months, but dropped to 47% effective against stopping infection. That's according to a new study that was released this week. Number five, Francis Hugin, the Facebook whistleblower who leaked documents revealing Instagram's negative impact on teens, he's testifying before Congress today. All right, that's it for the quick hits, the news you need to know, and that brings us to our main topic. So Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the Arizona Democrat who has been getting more and more attention as the debate over how to move forward on Joe Biden's agenda

continues. While Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, has owned much of the spotlight as the, quote, moderate or conservative Democrat who needs to be won over to advance Biden's top priorities, he's frequently been joined by Sinema as a pillar of opposition to some of Biden's largest plans. The 45-year-old Sinema was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012. In 2018, she won a Senate race against Republican Martha McSally to replace Jeff Flake, the never-Trump Republican who retired earlier that year. She's been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and the New Democrat Coalition. Her voting record is one of the most conservative of any Democrat in the Senate,

and she is also the first openly bisexual woman to ever be elected to Congress and the first woman to ever be elected to the Senate from Arizona. Attention on Sinema has reached a fever pitch in the last few days after several public encounters with protesters who are trying to pressure her into voting for Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill have made the headlines. First, Sinema was followed into a bathroom at Arizona State University where she teaches by protesters who were recording her on their phones. The activists were from the organization Living United for Change in Arizona, or Lucha, which is a Spanish word for fight. One identified herself as an undocumented immigrant and told Sinema they needed her

vote to establish a pathway to citizenship. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Democrats cannot insert immigration reform into the reconciliation bill, although Biden and the administration has still promised to push for immigration reform. The activist group tweeted that they wouldn't have resorted to confronting Sinema if she, quote, took meetings with the communities that elected her. She's been completely inaccessible, Lucha said. We're sick of the political game. Stop playing with our lives. President Biden, who was asked about the confrontation, called the tactics inappropriate, but also said it happens to everyone. The only people it doesn't happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around them," he said. Later, protesters gathered

outside a private fundraiser for Sinema and then she was confronted on an airplane as she headed back to Washington DC. Below, we'll take a look at some commentary from the right and left on Sinema and then my take. All right, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right criticized the protests and heralded Sinema for being the Democrats' version of Senator John McCain, the Republican who was once known as the Maverick. To understand Sinema, John Gabriel said in National Review, you need to understand Arizona. The Beltway's frustration is hugely entertaining for Arizonan conservatives and many of my Democratic neighbors, Gabriel wrote. She isn't an enigma to us locals.

But to understand Kyrsten Sinema, you must first understand Arizona. For years, outsiders considered Arizona to be the reddest of red states. That changed with Sinema's 2018 Senate victory, followed by President Biden and Senator Mark Kelly's 2020 wins. Was Arizona turning blue? Not so much. The state has swung to the right and left and back again. In the past 45 years, Democrats have held the governorship as often as Republicans have. That's because Arizona is neither conservative nor progressive.

It's contrarian. Sinema now has trackers following her to speeches as well as the class she teaches at Arizona State University, Gabriel added. Over the weekend, progressives even followed her with a camera in and out of an ASU ladies' room, a violation of state law. Activists boast of their ugly pressure campaign, but if anything, it will help Cinema in voters' eyes. In the most recent statewide poll, 46% of voters viewed Sinema favorably, while 39% viewed her unfavorably. Her net favorability is three points higher than that of fellow Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, who keeps his bald head down and meekly obeys party leadership.

She's also well-liked on both sides, having built working relationships and personal friendships with political opponents for years. Sinema is a shrewd enough politician to know that voters back home want politicians to get things done, even if it means working across the aisle. In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn said Sinema is the bad maverick. In his day, the media cheered Senator John McCain as a maverick who put principle ahead of party, McGurn said. But it turns out the word maverick applies only to Republicans opposing a Republican agenda. As Ms. Sinema's opposition to Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion agenda is revealing, a maverick in the Democratic Party elicits far different treatment. As for Mr. Manchin, as much as Democrats might resent the senior senator from West Virginia, he doesn't seem to rankle them as much as the senior senator from Arizona. Maybe it's because, as Mr. Manchin recently noted, he's, quote, never been a liberal and no one was

ever under any illusion he was. By contrast, Ms. Sinema started out on the left with roots in the Green Party and anti-Iraq war activism. As a legislator, however, she's proved herself willing to work across the aisle, and in her willingness to drive party leaders nuts, some detect the same streak of Arizona defiance that has characterized two of her Republican predecessors in the Senate, Barry Goldwater and John McCain. McCain's maverick identity, they say, has become Senator Sinema's model. She also knows Arizona is not a progressive state, notwithstanding that it went narrowly for Biden in 2020 and last year sent another Democrat, Mark Kelly, to the Senate. Perhaps Ms. Sinema is positioning herself to keep her seat when she's up for election again in 2024, even if the state reverts to voting Republican. In Spectator,

Scott McKay asked if the Democrat civil war just started in a public bathroom. We'll skip the big picture commentary about just how lousy the left is at persuasion anymore, McKay wrote. You already know all of that. It'll suffice to say that this is more likely to have the effect of hardening Sinema's position against the $3.5 trillion bill than it is to persuade her. Losers threatening to beat her in the next election when she's clearly had her own internal polling done and knows she can only win by minimizing the amount of irritation she imposes on independents and soft Republican voters, won't really move the needle.

It's been several years of this kind of behavior on the left, thanks to the rhetoric of people like Barack Obama, Sanders, who called for a political revolution and then acted surprised when one of his stooge followers attempted the political assassination of several Republican members of Congress, and Maxine Waters. We can predict the outcome of the Democrat Civil War, he added. It's going to end up exactly the same in politics as it did in other venues like academia, Hollywood, the arts, and journalism, where the hard left has chased ordinary liberals

and moderates off and begun imposing ruin on the institution. But unlike those, in politics, there are still some conservatives around that benefit from the implosion. So, let the games begin. Alright, that's it for the right's take. Here's what the left is saying about this. The left is increasingly worried about the risks that Sinema poses and wants to ramp up the pressure on her to support reconciliation.

In slow boring, Mattie Iglesias said Kyrsten Sinema must be stopped. Progressives should love and cherish Joe Manchin. If you look at West Virginia's underlying partisanship, he is clearly the person with the highest value over replacement in the whole Senate, he said. But then there's Kyrsten Sinema. Her home state is much less red than West Virginia, and her electoral performance is unimpressive compared to the partisan fundamentals. Beyond that, her objections to the Biden agenda, as far as we can tell, don't really come from a standpoint of political prudence or electoral calculation at all. Instead, she largely seems to object to the most popular, most populist ideas that Biden has. Sinema has been the key objector to Democrats' prescription

drug pricing proposal, which, as we saw from David Shore's polling earlier this week, is literally the most popular item on the Democratic agenda. She's also said she's opposed to any kind of increases of corporate or individual income tax rates, even floating the insanely unpopular idea of a carbon tax as an alternative. The idea that wealthy people and corporations pay too little in taxes is Americans' number one complaint about the current code. Remember that strong national political environment Democrats enjoyed in 2018? A big reason it was so strong is that Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through a giant business tax cut that was hideously unpopular.

Trump's low point in the polls had nothing to do with COVID or Russia or scandals or inappropriate behavior. It was when his top political priority was revealed to be helping the rich people and global businesses. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg asked, What's wrong with Kyrsten Sinema? People sometimes describe the Arizona senator as a centrist, but that seems the wrong term for someone who's been working to derail some of the most broadly popular parts of Joe Biden's agenda, corporate tax increases and reforms to lower prescription drug prices. Instead, she's acting as an obstructionist, seeming to bask in

the approbation of Republicans who will probably never vote for her. When Sinema ran for the Senate, the former left-wing firebrand reportedly told her advisors that she hoped to be the next John McCain, an independent force willing to buck her own party. Voting against a $15 minimum wage this year, she gave a thumbs down, accompanied by an obnoxious little curtsy that seemed meant to recall the gesture McCain gave when he voted against repealing key measures of the Affordable Care Act in 2017. But people admired McCain because they felt he embodied a consistent set of values, a straight-talking Captain America kind of patriotism. Sinema, by contrast, breaks with her fellow Democrats much more often. There hasn't been a year since she entered Congress, Harry

Enten wrote, when she's voted with her party more than 75% of the time. What really makes her different from McCain is that nobody seems to know what she stands for. In Mike, Rafi Schwartz said it's no wonder people are yelling at Kyrsten Sinema. I am personally of the mind that if someone is elected to high national office, they absolutely deserve to be yelled at all the time, no matter the circumstances, Schwartz said. If a person holds the lives and well-being of millions of constituents in their hands, then a sincere haranguing is truly a small price to pay in exchange for that sort of unimaginable power and privilege, especially if that person has gone out of their way to make themselves as unavailable as possible to those same constituents who might otherwise go through more traditional channels to get the

representative's attention. Which is all to say, I don't really have a problem with the group of activists trying to hold Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema accountable for her obstinate and largely self-serving refusal to not only pass her own party's legislative priorities, but to even explain why she's chosen to derail them in the first place. That progressives had to approach Sinema in her classroom at Arizona State University, trailing her to a nearby restroom as she refused to acknowledge their personal stories of human trafficking and anti-immigrant experiences, says more about her effort to insulate herself from criticism than it does any perceived impropriety on the part of the activists. All right, that's it for the rights take. And here is my take.

All right, so let's just start with something basic. Don't follow people in the public bathrooms with your phone recording. I'm sorry, you're never going to get me on board with that kind of quote-unquote activism, especially not when your impromptu protest ends up catching a bunch of innocent strangers on the video that you then go post on the internet for millions of people to see. It's not about pearl-clutching standards of decency or how to protest. Many of the right-wingers criticizing the protesters now have participated in some of the ugliest confrontational politics in the modern

era. But it's just stupid, and it makes you look a tad bit deranged, and it's also illegal, so don't do it. It's also political malpractice. Does anyone actually think these kinds of tactics are going to do anything other than harden Sinema's position and make her loathe the opposition to her left? There was a time when Sinema was the kind of person who participated in these sorts of demonstrations herself, but that time is clearly long past, and she isn't going to suddenly hop on board with the reconciliation bill because a bunch of young progressives tried to embarrass her in a bathroom stall while she was teaching at Arizona State University. Now, save some scorn for cinema too. It's one thing to be Senator John McCain, someone whose principles were well stated,

mostly consistent, and at least predictable. A lot of people saw value in that. I don't, and didn't. I think people who don't change their minds over the course of 30 years are probably closed-minded ideologues who shouldn't be U.S. senators, but at least you knew what McCain wanted and where he stood. What does Sinema want? Bipartisan agreement? Please. She wants to win her 2024 election, which is a perfectly logical motivation for a senator to have. She knows staying near the center is probably going to help her. But when you hold the keys to a massive agenda 80 million Americans voted for, not even a year ago, you should at least be able to explain why you won't use them. So far, Sinema seems incapable of doing that. It's not enough to say because Republicans don't support it or because I want this bill to be bipartisan. There has to be an

actual debate about what she wants in the bill and what she wants cut, why she feels that way, and how it fits into her larger vision of the country she wants. That explanation seems non-existent. There are a few other things worth pointing out, too. First, Sinema isn't doing this just to rake in corporate money. If she pisses off the left, which she may have already done, she'll lose money when the small donors who float most Senate candidates right now abandon her. As Iglesias rightly noted, Sinema isn't blocking popular progressive ideas because she's getting corporate money. She's getting corporate money because she's blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper. Secondly, Sinema has been nearly

impossible to reach as a legislator. That's why I'm not a fan of the activists who stalked her into a bathroom with their phones out. We shouldn't just gloss over the fact that she owes it to her constituents to be available to them at some point, and she has done an impressively bad job of that. Top it off with the fact she left Washington, D.C. in the midst of the negotiations on the reconciliation bill to attend a fundraiser with big donors in Phoenix at a high-end resort and spa. It's not hard to see why so many people are upset with her. Sinema has every right to oppose this legislation. Just because it's Biden's agenda doesn't mean it has to be hers. Of all people, I'll be the first to celebrate someone

who bucks the party line and offers some heterodox thinking. The issue here, though, is not that Sinema is doing that. It's just that she seems locked into a position that's inconsistent with her past stated views and divorced from many of the clearly expressed preferences that voters she represents want. If she's going to say no, that's fine, but the least she could do is offer a cogent explanation of why, and preferably one that fits into the larger vision of what her goals are in the Senate. That's what we're looking for. That's what we need. I'm curious to see how this plays out, but for now, it's just a big, great mess. All right, that's it for my take, and that brings us on to our reader question of the day.

Today's question comes from Rosie in Houston, Texas. She asks, in China with the demand for more solar power development in the U.S. If they pass even just one of their infrastructure bills, let alone both, there are plans for more investment in renewable energy, including solar. But it still remains that 80% of the world's silicon, which is necessary for solar panels, comes from China, and most likely by the use of forced labor camps controlled by the CCP. How do politicians plan to solve for this conflict of interest? the CCP. How do politicians plan to solve for this conflict of interest? Well, Rosie, it's a great question and there really isn't a good answer. John Kerry, the climate envoy, has said that Washington is deciding whether to keep solar panel products from Xinjiang out of the U.S. markets, but doing that would create huge problems for Biden, who wants to promote renewables and cut

costs. It's not at all clear how the U.S. could meet rising demand without China, where so many Uyghurs are being forced into labor camps that presumably work on the polysilicon used in solar panels. Prices were already up 100% between January and May at a nine-year high to meet the global demand. One sliver of light is that one of the experts from a Germany research company told the Associated Press that if the U.S. and European markets were to abandon Xinjiang's supply, they could probably get enough

polysilicon to make it work. But if any other countries followed suit, then the supplies would quickly get squeezed. So theoretically, we could wash our own hands, but not without forcing other countries into the same ethical predicament. Worsening the situation is the mounting evidence of the atrocities in China. A Chinese detective in exile just came forward with harrowing stories of systemic campaigns of torture against ethnic Uyghurs that included, quote, shackling people to a metal or wooden tiger chair, chairs designed to immobilize suspects, hanging people from the ceiling, sexual violence, electrocutions, and waterboarding. So this situation is really ugly. There's a lot of actually intra-environmentalist fighting going

on about this because so many people want the environmentalists to be speaking out about these forced labor camps. But yeah, it's a really tough position. I don't have a good answer. I don't know how they're going to solve it. I think the only clean way to solve it is, you know, to not take these products from China. But if you do that, the prices go up and you leave a lot of other people getting squeezed in a much tighter market. And I just, yeah, I don't know how it plays out. So we'll see.

It's a great thing to keep an eye on. All right. And that brings us to our story that matters for the day. Energy prices are climbing around the world thanks to supply constraints, rising demand, and bouts of extreme weather. So speaking of energy, in China and India, there is an electricity crisis right now. Dozens of power companies in the UK have folded, and there is a massive gas shortage because there are so few truck drivers to transport the fuel across the country.

Meanwhile, fuel at US pumps is up about 50% on average over the last year and oil and natural gas prices have also risen. Economists are warning that rising energy costs are one good way to slow down the economic recovery coming out of the pandemic. Every dollar that goes to electric and heating bills is a dollar that isn't spent on holiday shopping or going out to eat, Axios reported. They've got a fascinating story today about how this energy crisis could play into the economic recovery. Highly recommend it. All right, and that brings us to our numbers section. Today's numbers have a lot to do with our main story. 100% is the percentage of times Kyrsten Sinema has voted in line with Joe Biden, according to a vote tracker from FiveThirtyEight.

100% is also the percentage of times that Joe Manchin has voted in line with Joe Biden so far, according to a vote tracker from FiveThirtyEight. has voted in line with Joe Biden so far, according to a vote tracker from FiveThirtyEight. So while both have a historically conservative voting record, they have not yet bucked the president a single time. Forty-six percent is the percentage of Arizona Democrats who approve of Sinema's job performance in the third quarter of 2021. That's down 21 points from the first quarter and is according to a Morning Consult poll. Forty. 42% is the percentage of all Arizona voters who approve of her compared to 48% who said the same earlier this year. 40% is the percentage of Democratic voters who said they disapproved of Sinema in the third quarter of 2021. And 45% is the percentage of Republican voters who said they disapproved of Sinema in the third quarter

of 2021. So just to put an asterisk on that, that means that just 5% more of Republicans say they strongly disapprove of Sinema in the third quarter than Democrats right now, which is pretty interesting to see such a small amount of disparity there between Republicans and Democrats on a Democratic senator. on a Democratic senator. All right, and that brings us to our Have a Nice Day story. This one is about Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther, who died in 2020 after contracting colon cancer. He is being memorialized with a $5.4 million scholarship partnership between Netflix and his alma mater, Howard University. The scholarship fund will provide one freshman student per incoming class with a four-year scholarship covering full costs of university tuition with a focus on students who have exemplified exceptional

skills in the arts and demonstrate a financial need. The program is actually going to start this fall and it's going to kick off by awarding four scholarships to a student in each class. CNN has a great story about it today. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, please give us a five star rating if you're listening to this somewhere where you can rate podcasts. And we've said this, we'll continue to say it. If you go to the episode description right now, there is a link there to pledge and support this podcast. Please, if you can, it takes 15 seconds. Just go click that link, become a monthly supporter of the podcast.

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Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. dot com.