Why Pressuring Kyrsten Sinema Won’t Work

Jonathan Chait: “It’s not clear Sinema is a rational actor. She appears deeply invested in a personal narrative in which she is the Democratic version of John McCain, bravely defying her party to stand up for bipartisanship. And, while this is armchair psychoanalysis, her history in the Green Party is a kind of through-line to a personal style that has remained consistent even as her ideological commitments have changed radically.”

“Sinema, like many Green Party types, sees politics as an avenue for personal expression. Attempting to persuade a Green Party candidate not to take action X because it will have consequence Y just makes them angry. In 2000, Ralph Nader was surrounded by advisers who saw exactly what outcome his campaign would have (electing George W. Bush) but simply could not get him to budge. Nader’s own account of this campaign reveals a mind unable to think in straightforward consequentialist terms — he was too fixated on his right to do what he wanted to measure his actions in any practical way.”

The Hill: Five members of Sinema’s advisory board resign and call her one of the “principal obstacles to progress.”