by Frank Holmes, reporter
The Democratic Party’s Civil War has ramped up, thanks to a move by someone who technically isn’t even a member.
The Arizona Democratic Party has censured Senator Kyrsten Sinema, D-Az., for refusing to eliminate a long-standing Senate tradition—and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., is applauding them.
The party warned the senator last September that a backlash could be coming if she didn’t vote to abolish the filibuster, or if she rejected key parts of President Joe Biden’s enormous government spending plan.
If she denied the president on any major policy, especially what Democrats call a “Jim Crow relic” like the filibuster, the party would “issue a formal letter of CENSURE to Senator Sinema with the clear understanding that she could potentially lose the support of the ADP in 2024.”
Sinema proved that she is an independent senator, just like the so-called “maverick” John McCain, by giving a heartfelt speech supporting the filibuster, which requires senators to pass legislation with 60 votes. She and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin were the only two Democrats to buck their party on this issue—and they’ve paid the price.
The Arizona party chairwoman explained that the Democratic Party is a big tent coalition, and that’s why everyone has to think the same way.
“I want to be clear, the Arizona Democratic Party is a diverse coalition with plenty of room for policy disagreements, however on the matter of the filibuster and the urgency to protect voting rights, we have been crystal clear,” said Arizona Democratic Party Chair Raquel Terán after the censure.
“In the choice between an archaic legislative norm and protecting Arizonans’ right to vote, we choose the latter, and we always will.”
While party leaders “take no pleasure in this announcement,” she said in a statement, “the ADP Executive Board has decided to formally censure Senator Sinema as a result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy.”
That’s bad enough, but when socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked whether he approved of the measure, he said he was completely on board.
“I think that’s exactly right,” he said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday. “Look, on that issue of voting rights, this is something that’s almost different than anything else.”
He called Sinema’s stand “a terrible, terrible vote. And I think what the Arizona Democratic Party did was exactly right.”
Then, he said the entire thing was Donald Trump‘s fault because of a vast right-wing conspiracy. ”What that is, is that right now you have a Republican Party under [former President Donald] Trump’s leadership that is perpetuating this ‘big lie’ that Trump actually won the election, and therefore, you have 19 Republican states that are moving very aggressively into voter suppression, into extreme gerrymandering.”
Surprisingly, the pair had a defender: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. she tried to remind her fellow Democrats that they can’t afford to freeze anyone out—especially in a chamber where you only have a two-vote lead.
“I’ve discouraged people from making comments about” Manchin and Sinema, Pelosi said. “You never know who is going to be in the design of the next bill. And so we have to be respectful,” the Speaker told the media last Thursday.
Her efforts didn’t calm down her parties base. For the last several months, left-wing protesters have chased Senator Sinema into bathroom stalls and followed her around aggressively at the airport. They’ve also sailed out to a houseboat where Joe Manchin lives when he is in Washington, yelling criticisms at him for his independence.
Ironically, Bernie Sanders is not even technically a member of the Democratic Party. Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, he’s a registered independent – although he has run for the Democratic presidential nomination twice and caucuses with the Democratic Party in the Senate.
Kyrsten Sinema, who is a Democrat, has more courage standing up to her party than Sanders, the “independent.”
But then again, socialists were always outstanding at following the party line.