Kyrsten Sinema says she makes decisions by listening to business leaders, when asked about PRO Act

[GeneralMacArthur]

The massive hate train for Kyrsten Sinema is utterly ridiculous.  I'm surprised at the level of restraint she's shown given how dedicated a large part of the internet is to turning her into the next Hillary Clinton.

I'm sure this quote will be taken out of context and spread around like wildfire until the lie becomes the truth, just like Joe Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change."

[GeneralMacArthur]

The massive hate train for Kyrsten Sinema is utterly ridiculous.  I'm surprised at the level of restraint she's shown given how dedicated a large part of the internet is to turning her into the next Hillary Clinton.

I'm sure this quote will be taken out of context and spread around like wildfire until the lie becomes the truth, just like Joe Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change."

I think the hate that Sinema attracts is that she embodies the "f**k you, I've got mine" mentality you saw in figures like Paul Ryan.

No she doesn't.  She didn't have this f--k you attitude at all up until about three weeks ago when the left decided to make her target #1 for harassment and bulls--t.

Maybe it's immature of her to punch back when most politicians (e.g. Hillary) try to let that kind of s--t bounce off them and be above it.  I know if I was a politician and people (allegedly on my side) started writing hit pieces on me every day and flaming my social media accounts and began a coordinated campaign to spread lies about me and misrepresent my quotes and actions (as in the story of this very thread), I'd probably tell them to go f--k themselves multiple times a day.  I'd probably hire a social media manager whose entire job would be to "correct the record" every time someone came up with a new lie to spread about me, and another whose job would be to dunk on the idiots who believe those lies -- or as is more often the case, pretend to believe them to generate social proof.

The left chose to make her a target by lying about her $15 minimum wage vote.  They invented this fantasy where she dressed up as an anime character and "did a Fortnite dance" after french-kissing Mitch McConnell to singlehandedly kill millions of poor people.  And spread that around until everyone in your small corner of the party believed it as gospel.

None of this has anything to do with politics.  A politician was targeted by a bunch of assholes for relentless demonization, and has since then been reacting according to her personality.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Her vote against the minimum wage was a perfect storm. Recall the mood for the moment. Democrats had just taken the Senate off of the backs of economic liberalism. We won in Geoorgia off of $15 and $1400. And when it came to $15, she not only voted no, she voted no in the most ostentatious way possible. Her new colleagues in Georgia voted for it. Her junior Senator voted for it. In fact, the only battleground Democrat to join her was Hassan - a Chamber of Commerce Democrat who was more concerned with its elimination of tipped minimum wages than anything else in the bill.

In contrast, the worst thing Manchin was the face of was sinking the nomination of a nominee the Bernie left saw as unqualified.

Man I love how you're cherry-picking Democratic senators whose votes "matter" here when 8 Democrats voted against it.

You even say "in contrast, Joe Manchin..." even though Joe Manchin also voted against the $15 amendment.

You even say "the only battleground Democrat who joined her was Hassan" even though both NH Dems voted no.  But I guess NH is only a battleground state when it's Hassan.  And of course Tester's seat (he also voted no) is Safe Dem so Montana's not a battleground.

Also I love how the left, who spent tons of energy attacking Ossoff and Warnock right up until the moment they got elected (as one does when one is a fifth column), immediately decided they deserved full credit for that victory and that the only reason we won Georgia was because of [whatever pet issue is pertinent in the current conversation].

Finally, "the most ostentatious way possible" is not true at all.  Plenty of senators vote yes/no using thumbs up/down.  You guys just feigned ignorance about the Senate so you could pretend Sinema is the only senator to ever do this.  Oh, or maybe it wasn't the thumbs down, it was her bending her knees a little bit when she did it.  That six-inch bend of the knees is the difference between a normal "no" vote and "the most ostentatious no vote ever" huh?  Give me a break.  And also who cares how she delivered her vote?  It has nothing to do with politics.  It has nothing to do with anything!  Sinema is working with Romney right now to come up with a bill to reduce student debt -- a bipartisan bill that actually has a chance of passing.  That's what a good conservadem does and that's why she's there.  That's what actually matters -- not "oh she bent her knee when she voted no on daddy's pointless show amendment."

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's a video of her Fortnite dancing on the poor. Actually, you yourself even wrote up some cringe post defending her actions and saying that it was actually a Fortnite dance on the left for "harassing" her.

You know, because in MacArthur's world, if you're mean to the centrists online, you don't deserve a living wage.

The $15 minimum wage is a terrible idea and being against it doesn't mean that you hate the poor.  A $15 minimum wage would be awful for the poor because it would eliminate the jobs they need.

Bending your knees while you vote is not the same thing as a Fortnite dance.  Sinema doesn't even know what Fortnite is.  You guys just made up this "Fortnite Dance" talking point because it sounds a lot worse than what actually happened.  Just like you made up the "she gave Mitch McConnell a big kiss before voting to kill the poor" talking point.

Sinema announced days ahead of the vote that she was against it, along with 8 other Democrats.  For this, she was the target of a massive online smear campaign, which turned her vote from a "no" into a "hell no."  I fully support that.

The $15 minimum wage amendment needed 60 votes to pass and it got 42.  It wasn't a legitimate amendment in the first place, it was written with zero expectation that it would actually pass, and Sanders knew it would fail, but he introduced it anyway purely as a wedge issue to divide the party, like the asshole he is.

But listening to you and your friends, one would think that Sinema singlehandedly killed this amendment.  You're all just pretending to be too stupid to understand how the process works so you can fool other people who legitimately don't understand how the process works.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Manchin didn't publicly attach his face to the repeal. The only others to vote no in such an ostentatious way were Carper and Coons - who are well-known assholes.

Almost like Shaheen is more entrenched, has a stronger reputation in New Hampshire, and has drawn weaker competition than Hassan has.

I also don't consider Manchin or Tester "battleground Senators". I didn't include them because I think they're both DOA come 2024.

Man look at those goalposts shifting in real time.  You created an incredibly small circle of Senators whose votes matter so you could hate the ones you want to hate and hand-wave away the rest.

He says, as I acknowledge a page beforehand that she was not the only Senator who did this. If you want my honest opinion, it was a very clumsy attempt to emulate John McCain's infamous thumbs down. Meanwhile, you not only acknowledged that she did it, but you defended it.

She wasn't emulating anyone.  She voted no via a thumbs down just like dozens of other Senators do on a daily basis.  And I defended it because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, unless you're a Twitter leftist trying to gin up some faux outrage against a Senator you've decided to hate.

All while you conveniently leave out that Joe Biden has been pushing for $15. A $15 minimum wage increase is a mainstream Democratic priority now. Ossoff and Warnock won on $15 and $1400, not $11 and vague promises of bipartisanship. Of course, Biden is not an idiot and isn't going to scuttle important things like COVID relief because Sinema and Friends didn't vote for it. Comparing her to Hillary Clinton is an insult to Hillary herself.

I've said many times that I disagree with Joe Biden on this issue.  Believe it or not you can still like a politician without hero worshipping him and shifting your ideology to match exactly with his positions.

Ossoff and Warnock ran on like 100 different things and a $15 minimum wage was a pretty minor issue in the race.  The main issue in the race was Trump's stolen election rhetoric.  The second-most-important issue was COVID.  Other than that the race was mostly a personality contest.  We heard about "Defund the Police" 100x more than the minimum wage, which didn't even come up in the Loeffler-Warnock debate.

[GeneralMacArthur]

But listening to you and your friends, one would think that Sinema singlehandedly killed this amendment.  You're all just pretending to be too stupid to understand how the process works so you can fool other people who legitimately don't understand how the process works.

Manchin and Sinema, together, did kill this amendment on their own. None of the other Dem Senators who voted against announced any position before those two; they were waiting for them to decide. If Manchin and Sinema had stated openness there is literally no doubt in the mind of anyone paying attention that the remaining votes could not be (easily) mopped up by whipping votes. And yes, it is entirely within the power of a 50+1 majority of the Senate, if they actually supported the policy, to change the threshold from 60 to 50+1. Once Manchin and Sinema opposed it, the rest saw it as a free vote where they could signal.

The minimum wage needed 60 votes to pass.  The authoritarian fantasy where the VP overrides the parliamentarian to force through illegal legislation was never going to happen.

It's amazing how much you'll go out of your way to blame Sinema for singlehandedly killing this amendment that was never written with intent to pass.  Apparently she controls the votes of 7 other Democrats.  You guys just have to blame her because you can't accept that $15 failed on its merits.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I like how those who feel the need to defend one of those most privileged persons on the planet from the horrors of people being rude online make this about the minimum wage vote.
She is demanding that all legislation be approved by Mitt Romney and nine of his closest friends for no apparent reason. Also taking money from the chamber of commerce and doing NRA (restaurant industry, not guns) fundraisers precludes you from demanding that liberals be 'on your side'.

I'm online.  So yes, I engage with other people online.  And when they behave like middle school bullies, or act like know-it-all 15 year olds when they actually have a very poor understanding of government, I'm going to tell them they suck.

"Lol I won because you paid attention to me" way to be a little kid.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There you have it, folks.

I can't even imagine the amount of egregious privilege it takes to actually believe what MacArthur does.

Step 1:  Make a bunch of ridiculous demands in the most obnoxious way possible ("vote for our policy or you literally want poor people to die")
Step 2:  Behave like colicky babies when you don't get what you want
Step 3:  Blame your poor behavior for why you didn't get what you wanted, instead of your poor policy.
Step 4:  Insult the other side for caring about your poor behavior

The reality is, your policies don't become law because they suck.  And people hate your movement because you act like mean little children.  You conflate the two (as with this Aren LeBrun meme that got spread all around the internet) as a shield.  "Our policies are perfect, nobody could have possibly voted against them on the merits.  They must be voting against them because we act like mean little children.  LOL imagine voting to kill poor people because of mean tweets."

It's bizarre, sociopathic behavior.  I blame social media for teaching young people that it's ok to behave this way.  Nobody would ever act like this in real life around other real people.  And as the meme shows, y'all are self-aware about it.  You know you're behaving like mean little children, but you think politicians should ignore that and vote for your policies anyway.  Which they would -- if your policies didn't suck.

It's also 100% self-delusion.  Y'all just can't accept that real people who really do care about poor people still oppose a $15 national minimum wage on the merits of the policy.  Because Bernie's platform is basically a religion now and it's unimaginable that someone would actually oppose it for legitimate reasons, because it's flawless -- they must be bad people who had bad person reasons for opposing it.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Today I learned that a majority passing legislation is an authoritarian fantasy.

But we get it there Rahm, you don't want actual policy changes Democrats are just placeholder not Republicans for you. You can just cool it a little on your endless quest to scold those damn kids who expect legislatures to do things.

Rules are rules.  You don't like 'em?  That's fine, change the rules.  There's a mechanism in place to do that.

What you can't do is just decide to ignore the rules when you don't like them.  That's like if you threw a pitch, it was a foul, and you said "screw you ump, my entire team voted and we said it was a strike, so we win."  I don't support that, a majority of the country doesn't support that -- but that's not a majority that matters to you I suppose.

[GeneralMacArthur]

what even is the point of having a parliamentarian if the majority party can just ignore her whenever the rules get in their way?

There's an opportunity at the start of every Senate session to set the rules for the upcoming session.  That is how previous changes have been made.  If you don't like the rules, you can change the rules.  You can't just arbitrarily decide to throw out the rules you don't like mid-game.

It's just like the NFL Season. At the start of the season, you can change the rules, and every year they do change some rules.  But you can't change the rules in the middle of the game.  And you can't just have your team decide "well we want it to be a TD so we're overruling the referees, Saints win."

But even this argument is moot because in order to buy the "it's Sinema's fault we don't have a $15 minimum wage" argument, you also have to believe that:

A) All 42 Dems who voted Yes in a political show vote would also have voted Yes on an actual bill to raise the minimum wage to $15.
B) The 8 Dems who voted No in the political show vote were actually in favor of $15 but were cowed by Sinema/Manchin into voting No.
C) All 50 Dems would also have voted to break the rules specifically so a $15 minimum wage could pass

None of these three points are true.  But people believe them anyway.  So it's not even an argument about ethics or consequences or what's right... it's just straight up reality that the bill was never going to pass.  It was not written with intent of passing.  Sanders came up with the idea just to divide the Dems because he knew it wasn't going to pass.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Just noticed that this whole thread is based on a tweet from an Intercept pundit, doing what Intercept pundits do -- taking something out of context, twisting and editorializing heavily with his own opinions to make it seem like she said something she didn't actually say.  Bet nobody watched the actual clip.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The massive hate train for Kyrsten Sinema is utterly ridiculous.  I'm surprised at the level of restraint she's shown given how dedicated a large part of the internet is to turning her into the next Hillary Clinton.

She’s more Joe Lieberman than Hillary Clinton.

Call me when she actually singlehandedly torpedoes important legislation.  Right now everyone's acting like she singlehandedly killed the minimum wage amendment when there are 18 other senators who also voted no that you need to flip to get to 60, and there probably would have been more if it actually had a chance of passing since plenty of Dems who oppose $15 voted Yes anyway just to avoid primary challenges.