Being Kyrsten Sinema

How wonderful to be wrapped up in herself

Can you imagine how thrilling it is to be Kyrsten Sinema?

The President of the United States invites you for a one-on-one in the Oval Office – not once, but three times in a single day!

Senior White House officials sit in your office for hours on end!

Every Democratic senator checks in to see how you’re doing!

All official Washington is talking about you!

You’re in all the headlines. You’ve got invitations from all the talk shows.

You trend on Twitter!

Corporate lobbyists are lining up to write checks for your next campaign!

And in a city where your best friend is typically someone who stabs you in the front, no one dares cross you. You’re mollified, stroked, complimented. You’re wined, dined, courted.

This is what it means to have made it! 

And to think you once lived in an abandoned gas station without indoor plumbing or electricity. You were once even a social worker.

Now you’re single-handedly able to stop tens of millions of Americans from getting childcare, pre-K, health care, free community college, paid family leave!

You’ve come a long way!

How many politicians in American history start politics in the Green Party and work on Ralph Nader’s presidential election, and years later vote with Donald Trump 25 percent of the time, and are now on the verge of sinking the largest climate-change initiative in history?

How many have the power to destroy the Democratic Party?

It must give you goosebumps.

I can’t get over you. You probably can’t get over you.

I vividly remember you giving a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage. You did that with such panache. 

And you refused to eliminate the filibuster or to pass new voting rights laws, even in the face of dozens of voter-suppression laws coming from the states. Talk about courage.  

You’d be forgiven if all this went to your head.

And now, to top it all off, you won’t even tell the President or your colleagues what you want to get your vote for their “Build Back Better” plan. You just say it’s too big and you don’t like all the tax increases.

Good play! That’s how to keep Washington on edge!

The best chance in a generation to reverse widening inequality and the shrinking middle class, maybe the last chance. But you have other ideas -- and they’re all about you. Which is the way it’s supposed to work in America, right? Looking out for Number One!

You’re only 45. Keep it up – build your power, take all that money from fat cats, keep Washington guessing, become the key vote – and who knows where you’ll end up?

Who knows where America will end up, with the likes of you in power?