On Thursday, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema set fire to what may or may not have been left of her integrity in a speech on the Senate floor where, in her trademark inarticulate and narcissistic way, she pontificated on how the Democratic Party was not properly reaching across the aisle to work with a Republican Party that refuses to even debate things like voting rights legislation. Calling Sinema’s presentation “gross” underserves how putrid a display of craven delusion it was. In response, fellow Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego called out Sinema by name on the House floor, saying: “Today, the House showed where it stands. We won’t shrink from protecting our democracy and the voting rights of all Americans. It’s past time for the U.S Senate, and Senator Sinema to do the same.”
There are very few people who vote Democratic in the country, and specifically in Arizona, who don’t want Gallego to primary Sinema in 2024. Sinema’s tragic performance this past year has led to the kinds of polling numbers once reserved for politicians who abused children. On Friday, Gallego went on CNN to both make the case for why he should be Arizona’s next Democratic senator and make sure he didn’t say he was running for the Senate: “2024 is a long time from now. I'm focusing on 2022. I never say no to the future, and I think also right now you hear a lot of Arizonans that are very unhappy with the fact that she is blocking voting rights legislation.”
And then Gallego got even more serious.
Let’s set the stage for Gallego’s appearance.
Gallego made a quick jab at Sinema’s complete detachment from reality, saying that he would “keep his ears open, I’ll continue to have my open meetings, something that she should try to do once in a while.” Sinema hasn’t held a town hall with Arizonans in three years, probably because she’s a coward and a dirtbag. (My words, not Gallego’s.)
Gallego explained that part of what is so noxious about Sinema’s speech and stance against voting rights is that voting rights should not be considered a partisan issue in the first place, regardless of whether or not Sinema wants to be thought of as a centrist or some kind of faux-moderate. “This is not a progressive thing. There's nothing progressive about being pro-voting rights. It's actually a very American patriotic thing and the fact that she's using an archaic rule to find the constitution to stop voting rights is very problematic for a lot of Arizonans of all political persuasions.”
Gallego continued to point out that for the people who voted for her, a majority of Arizonans, Sinema “is really disappointing.” When played a clip of Sinema’s speech where she claims to “support” the legislation that she is unwilling to vote for but is scared of the cultural divisiveness of … oh, who cares what b.s. she’s hurling out there. Gallego generously calls the sentiment “naive” before pointing out that Sinema seems to have forgotten her pretend ethical position on the filibuster back when she moved it aside to raise the debt ceiling. “So when it’s convenient to Wall Street she has a new set of principles, but when it comes to underlying legislation that has been the bedrock of our democracy, then she somehow goes back to these ‘ancient principles.’”
After playing the infamous clip of then-candidate Sinema back in 2010 railing against Sen. Joe Lieberman and the abuse of the filibuster, Gallego explained that he began his Democratic political career alongside Sinema. “The only consistency about Kyrsten Sinema’s roles and positions is inconsistency.” The CNN moderator, willing to go about 1 inch deep here, tells Gallego that Sinema probably believes this political position is popular, to which Gallego replies that “she is 100 percent missing the mark.”
At the end of the interview, with less than 30 seconds remaining, Gallego was asked about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s refusal to testify before the Jan. 6 committee. Gallego was succinct: “Look, Kevin is a coward. He’s a moral coward.”
We can only hope 2024 gets here along with something resembling a democracy.
Here is Gallego on the House floor, responding to Sinema’s hot trash existence.
And Sinema back in the day, pretending to care about our democracy.