Kyrsten Sinema is the Democrat Kelly Loeffler. She got one taste of power and suddenly couldn’t sell out her principles fast enough.
This article makes a larger point, which is that Democrats’ emphasis on consensus is dumb and should no longer be a concern. Totally valid. It’s not like the GOP thought about bipartisanship when they blocked Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination and then got Amy Coney Barrett confirmed right before Trump lost the election.
“In the ’90s, Bill Clinton and his allies in the Democratic Leadership Council argued that the only way for Democrats to get back on top and win was to fundamentally accept right-wing arguments, and say Democrats could accomplish those goals better,” says Burmila. “And the only way that could be palatable to Democrats was to redefine success as bipartisan, to say that you can pass legislation with a Republican set of goals, but you can also temper the extremism of a Newt Gingrich.”
A far more compelling explanation of the vogue for bipartisan thinking is its allure for political elites heavily invested in status quo arrangements. “It becomes a cover for never having to do anything progressive…
The bipartisan pipe dream is ultimately antipolitical—a way of doing politics without actual conflict, clarifying debate, or a coherent strategy extending from one election cycle to the next. Neoliberal political elites cleave to the view “that bipartisanship is somehow supposed to signal a mandate,” Geismer says. “It doesn’t. That’s not where mandates come from. You had, for example, a big vote behind the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but then there’s massive backlash after that. It’s a false narrative about American history, and it’s weird how the Democrats have fed this.”