When Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, barks âJump!â Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent, obediently asks, âHow high?â
Despite a January 2021 puff-piece profile on CBSâ â60 Minutesâ touting the Mainerâs supposed independence, the two-term King is an independent in name only. One is hard-pressed to recall the last time he didnât vote in lockstep with Senate Democrats, with whom he caucuses.
He told â60 Minutesâ that he ran for Maine governor in 1994 as an independent because he âdidnât feel comfortable with the Democrats on the taxation-regulation sideâ and âdidnât feel comfortable with the Republicans on the social-issues side.â
Since arriving in the Senate in 2013, however, Kingâs âcomfortâ level with the Democratic Partyâs hard-left positions on taxation and regulation, as well as on social issues, has increased markedly, such that, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, the nominal independent has voted for President Joe Bidenâs agenda 98.3% of the time.
Two states over, Vermont is home to the Senateâs (until now) only other nominal independent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who also caucuses with Democrats.
Sanders thinks the Democrats arenât far enough left, which accounts for his lower 91.4% vote-with-Biden score. But when push comes to shove, he always votes for whatever left-wing economic and social-cultural legislation Democrats devise, if only because four-fifths of a socialist loaf is better than no loaf at all.
On Dec. 9, King and Sanders were joined by a third independent, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who renounced her Democratic Party affiliation.
Sinemaâs degree of independence going forward, however, remains to be seen, inasmuch as her FiveThirtyEight.com pro-Biden score is 93.1%.
In fairness, however, that 6.9% disagreement does encompasses some big-ticket items, most notably the freshman Arizona senatorâs adamant refusal to agree to abolish the Senate filibuster.
Had she (and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat) gone along with the rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus in voting to do away with the filibuster, one shudders to think what far-left legislation Democrats would have rammed into law on a purely party-line vote. (Think statehoodâand two Democratic senatorsâfor the District of Columbia.)
Sinema hasnât said whether she would continue to actively participate in the Senate Democratic Caucus, although she did confirm she wouldnât be caucusing with Republicans.
But to say her declaration of independence didnât sit well with Democrats and liberalsâin and out of the Senateâwould be an understatement.
Appearing Dec. 11 on CNN, Sanders roundly criticized Sinema, who also opposed Bidenâs original, multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better boondoggle before agreeing to a scaled-back version.
âShe is a corporate Democrat, who has ⊠sabotaged enormously important legislation,â the Vermont senator fumed.
In the Dec. 11 Washington Post, editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder drew Sinema alongside the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, presumably on Christmas Eve, on the roof of a home. She was depicted pulling the pin of a hand grenade and dropping it down the chimney, which was marked âDemocrats.â
In a two-minute-plus YouTube video released two days earlier explaining her decision, Sinema said:
I promised [Arizonans] Iâd be an independent voice for our state. I promised that I would always do what is right for the people of Arizona. And thatâs what Iâve done.
Registering as an independent and showing up to work with the title of âindependentâ is a reflection of who Iâve always been.
During much of the slickly-produced video, the senator is wearing purple clothing. Thatâs probably not by chance, but almost certainly a savvy, subliminal signal to the Arizona electorate, given how evenly divided the state is between the two parties. (Biden won Arizona by 0.3 of 1% of the vote in 2020.)
We have no way of knowing for sure, but we suspect that Sinemaâs decision to disaffiliate from an increasingly lockstep-leftist Democratic Party can be traced back to Oct. 3, 2021, when she was harassed by left-wing extremists at Arizona State University for not supporting the original Build Back Better bill at the time. It culminated with one of them chasing her into a restroom, all the while recording the pursuit on cellphone video.
We also donât know whether Sinemaâs going independent is intended primarily to preserve her reelection viability in 2024, when she would likely have faced a Democratic primary challenge from the Left. A September poll found her favorable-unfavorable rating among Democrats 20 points underwater.
What we do know, however, is this: If Sinema turns out to be just another âindependentâ in the sense that King and Sanders are independentsâthat is, in name onlyâthe move will be, for all practical purposes, all sizzle and no steak.
On the other hand, the Arizonan couldâand, we would argue, shouldâfollow the lead of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who in October not only renounced her affiliation with the Democratic Party, but sharply denounced how far left it has lurched.
Gabbard said the Democratic Party is ânow under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.â She accused it of âracializing every issue, stoking anti-white racismâ and âactively working to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.â
Inasmuch as Sinema isnât retiring, thatâs unlikely to happen, of course, but it would be a measure of genuine independence.
This article first appeared at The Washington Times.
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