President Joe Manchin’s veto power restored

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt


Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

I guess we have the results of that arm-wrestling contest between Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema:[1]

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is changing her party affiliation to independent, delivering a jolt to Democrats’ narrow majority and Washington along with it.

In a 45-minute interview, the first-term senator told POLITICO that she will not caucus with Republicans and suggested that she intends to vote the same way she has for four years in the Senate. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

Provided that Sinema sticks to that vow, Democrats will still have a workable Senate majority in the next Congress, though it will not exactly be the neat and tidy 51 seats they assumed. They’re expected to also have the votes to control Senate committees. And Sinema’s move means Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — a pivotal swing vote in the 50-50 chamber the past two years — will hold onto some but not all of his outsized influence in the Democratic caucus.[2]

Sinema’s “values” and “behavior” were, like Manchin’s, those of a Democrat In Name Only, as indeed she now claims the Democratic Party was never a fit for her.[3] She was, and will remain, one of two excuses for Democratic inaction.[4]

I do not take Sinema at her word. She may not caucus with the Republicans but she is dropping the pretense of being a Democrat.[5] She is surely moving to restore Manchin’s veto power, whether she admits it or not.

Burgess Everett, “Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate,” Politico, December 9, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-arizona-senate-independent-00073216

Competitive authoritarian regime project


Fig. 1. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Debra Cassens Weiss, “3 conservative SCOTUS justices appear to seek middle ground on ‘independent state legislature’ theory,” American Bar Association Journal, December 7, 2022, https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/3-conservative-scotus-justices-appear-to-seek-middle-ground-on-independent-state-legislature-theory

Cristian Farias, “‘A Theory With Big Consequences’: The Supreme Court’s Gamble With Democracy Appears to Be Veering Away From Extremism—For Now,” Vanity Fair, December 8, 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/12/supreme-courts-election-case-moore-harper-oral-arguments


  1. [1]David Benfell, “Democrats and contradiction,” Not Housebroken, December 7, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/11/18/democrats-and-contradiction/
  2. [2]Burgess Everett, “Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate,” Politico, December 9, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-arizona-senate-independent-00073216
  3. [3]Burgess Everett, “Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate,” Politico, December 9, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-arizona-senate-independent-00073216
  4. [4]David Benfell, “Democrats and contradiction,” Not Housebroken, December 7, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/11/18/democrats-and-contradiction/
  5. [5]Burgess Everett, “Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate,” Politico, December 9, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-arizona-senate-independent-00073216

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