Kyrsten Sinema and The Allure of Political "Independence"

"Oh, you don't *do* politics? That's adorable. Sometimes I wish I didn't have a brain too."

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned: this is, in fact, the second angry manifesto about Kyrsten Sinema that I have posted on the internet.

You would think I’ve run out of negative things to say about this eccentric “wine mom” who just raided the costume bin at an arcade photo booth, but alas, I have not. In fact, I would like to open this piece with the words of Canadian-American alt-rock singer, seven-time Grammy award-winning multiplatinum recording artist, and actress cast as God in the 1999 motion picture Dogma, Alanis Nadine Morissette. Said the 2018 Democratic voter to the now-least popular senator in America: “Did you forget about me, [Senator] Duplicity? I hate to bug you in the middle of [your retreat at a vineyard in Napa].”

Alright. Enough shenanigans. Let’s get down to business.

In early December of last year, conveniently right after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) secured an astonishing 2.5% victory in the December 6th Georgia Senate runoff against Herschel Walker, Kyrsten Sinema released a self-congratulatory video announcing her intent to leave the Democratic Party and register as an Independent. Interspersed by bought footage of the Arizona desert, Sinema shared her milquetoast commentary about partisan politics over a stock audio track that sounds as if it was poached from a TV ad for a logistics consulting firm.

Sinema’s announcement was, in all likelihood, a political maneuver aimed at avoiding a crushing defeat in a Democratic primary next summer, but hidden among her insincere and condescending platitudes about “partisan division” and “coming together” is one piece of rationale that made my ears perk up. Sinema notes that most voters, both in Arizona and nationwide, are registered to vote as independents. What the Senator seems to suggest here is that her centrist brand of politics is not only vastly popular, but that her decision to leave the Democratic Party was righteous, and that anything less would be to ignore the desires of her constituents. (Can you imagine such a thing?!)

In all fairness, however, Sinema is right. According to Gallup, a plurality of voters in the United States are registered independents, and according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, Republicans and Independents are essentially tied for registered voters, with Republicans holding a narrow, 30,000-person plurality that appears to be steadily shrinking. Looking beyond raw registration data, however, polling appears to show that a vast majority of voters — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — are deeply dissatisfied with both major parties. Suffolk University found that 60% of the American public wants a third major party or a number of smaller parties.

Now let me don my “Captain Obvious” hat to ask the following question: If the public is so dissatisfied with division, if their contempt for the two parties is so fervent, why is the electorate still so divided? This invisible supermajority of which Sinema speaks is not voting as a distinct bloc with cohesive political interests, if it even exists at all. They remain stalwart in their voting habits, and, at the same time, somehow, dissatisfied with the two-party system. The question, then, on everyone’s mind — or perhaps just mine — is: why?

Now, before I delve into my theories, let me first say that I recognize the validity of true political independence, and one group comes immediately to mind. Recently, I’ve been intrigued by the disaffected American Right. Matthew Continetti’s new book, The Right, was my gateway drug. Then came columnists like David Brooks and the National Review crowd — those of the Chicago School-style liberal tradition, who filled out the ranks of many a Bush and Reagan Administration. And while I have plenty of qualms with the politics and occasional hypocrisy of this crowd, I sympathize with their displacement within today’s political coalitions. But this is only one group among many who might be ideologically incompatible with party loyalty. America’s political coalitions are changing — and fast. Anyone who, in the Obama years, might have considered themselves “centrist” has been relegated to the center-left as the Republican Party lurches rightward.

This brings me to another point, which is that true centrism is hard to come by in the politics of today. There is a vast expanse of empty space between the centrist Democrats and the new “moderate” GOP, which is still very much right wing. Whereas before, politicians represented a fairly continuous political spectrum fanning outward from the center, now the spectrum fans out from the respective zeitgeists of both major parties, one of which is becoming increasingly extreme.

Independence is the new black

Now, if we could return to Ms. Sinema, I’d like to talk about the title of this piece: the allure of political independence. In my mind, there’s this perverse aestheticism to being a centrist. It’s as if, whenever a person says that they’re a centrist or an Independent, they’d like everyone in the room to gawk in amazement, wishing they’d thought of doing the same. And many do shower these people with praise. But centrists aren’t virtuous for “not buying into partisan politics.” Who is buying into partisan politics?! In the post-Watergate era, is anyone really trusting in or inspired by government? I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not the world’s most cantankerous Democrat because it’s enjoyable.

Ours is an individualistic society, this we know. But in all of this radical independence we lift up those who go out on their own. We exalt figures like Elon Musk, who has long, very loudly, said that he is politically independent. This insistence, of course, supported by politically unifying Tweets such as “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” and “I recommend voting for a Republican Congress.”

And this brings me to Kyrsten Sinema. If there was any question about what the Senator truly desires, it has everything to do with attention: who else but the lady who wore neon wigs in the halls of congress and stood up to clap for Donald Trump at the State of the Union?

To her credit, the Senator’s impressive negotiating skills and close personal relationships with Senate Republicans were paramount in passing a series of massive bipartisan legislative achievements last year. But it’s not as if she had to stall Joe Biden’s entire agenda to achieve her bipartisan victories. These empty platitudes about rejecting party politics mean nothing in reality. Sinema was only the fourth-most bipartisan Senator in the first session of the 117th Congress, according to the Lugar Center. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) was first. She’s a swing-state Democrat who supported abolishing the filibuster and went on to win re-election by almost 10 points in November. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) headed up the Democratic effort for a bipartisan gun control deal in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas last spring, the first such legislation in almost three decades. A staunch, northeastern liberal, Murphy was nonetheless able to hold his own at the negotiating table with Republicans. See, walking and chewing gum at the same time is possible!

In a world where Republicans are becoming increasingly sympathetic to racist, anti-semitic, and anti-institutional rhetoric, the adult solution to political tribalism is not to legitimize these extremist positions by equating them to some kind of “politics as usual” stunt of modern Washington. In that sense, there is a dangerousness to radical centrism in today’s world. Cooperation is one thing, but fecklessness is another — especially in a world where Mike Pence and Fox News are “too liberal” for many.

With that said, it should be known that I pre-registered as a Democrat on my sixteenth birthday. As I finish this piece, I am wearing Pod Save America merchandise. I’ve rarely been outside my coastal bubble and my brain is infected by the incessant consumption of national political news. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

Until next time.