JUST IN: Kyrsten Sinema has left DC amid negotiations. Her spokesman says it's for a doctor's appointment "for a foot injury." But a hotel just confirmed she will be at her PAC’s retreat with donors for cocktails and dinner at a high-end resort and spa in Phoenix. (@nytimes)

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) October 1, 2021

That's just her not playing by anybody's rules. What a go getter.

While the findings of your poll are certainly interesting and worth noting, I find your dependence on a single poll indicating that 46% of Arizonans like Senator Sinema as a person (which is quite far from "everybody") amusing. This is much too big a leap of logic to draw from such limited evidence. For example, here's another survey of Arizonans conducted early last month (i.e. at a similar point in time to the one you showcased) that 1) evaluates her actual job approval rating, which is more important than her personal favorability rating, and 2) finds Senator Sinema to be dead even at 30% job approval and 30% disapproval, which stands in contrast to the other Democratic Senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly, who is above water by 15 points (45% approve, 30% disapprove). Sinema, in this survey, is notably better-liked by Donald Trump voters than by Joe Biden voters. And that I find somehow believable, as her sole enthusiast here seems to be a contributor named Trumpstyle who joined the forum shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Dude, both Sinema and Manchin gave up on negotiations thursday night, they were just too far apart from the progressives.

"— WaPo’s Greg Sargent reports that when Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) walked away from negotiations late Thursday night without a deal on reconciliation"

In your political system, politicians just haft to raise money to remain competitive in most cases. And I have seen a lot of posts from you on this site, this is the first time I have seen you attacking a politician for raising money which just happens to be a Woman and you mention SPA, Tailhouse also called her a b*tch. I can see what's going on.

Why are you mentioning my name, I had Trumpstyle since Vanilla Wow and you trying imply some kind of timing with it when I created my account here. Which was over 1 year ago after when Donald Trump announced his presidential run and 2 month before the general election when every poll had him losing big.

The poll you linked isn't so bad, you didn't mention that 27% didnt have a opinion on her. I only get my america news from twitter and The young turks, but from what I seen she has been hammered from both youtubers, comedians like seth meyers/colbert and mainstream media, so it isn't that terrible.

When Kyrsten won Arizona in 2018 it was still considered a red state and not a purple state. The governor was a republican (Doug Docey) and 2 republican senators (john mccain, Jeff flake) so she had to form her strategy after that time period, which was to be a moderate. And Sinema is a Woman and Mark Kelly is a Man, it's just a lot easier for a man to win in politics. There have been articles about this in the NYT when looking at Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden. Mark Kelly won 2020 when the state was considered purple and he's a Man so he will form his strat after that. Comparing Kyrsten to Mark Kelly is just silly.

I sense a tinge of sexism in those who are criticizing only the female member of this right wing policy duo and not Senator Manchin as well, and that issue stretches well beyond this forum to include certain MSNBC hosts and lots of other "progressive" voices out there. On this much we can agree. Matter-of-factly, I've noticed that, regardless of a particular contributor's politics, women seem to usually be cast as the main villains in people's arguments around here despite composing only a relatively small minority of Congresspeople and state governors and public officials in general. This vastly disproportionate fixation specifically on women's evils, both real and imagined, is noticeable both in public policy topics like this and also on the more gaming-oriented political topics that get posted to the VGC main page. (Nevermind that female gamers and developers and even journalists compose only a small share of the total either, they are most of the villains in just about any given story somehow.) I think it's just a groupthink mentality that develops in the absence of women. With no one here to defend the female sex, men instinctively gravitate toward attacking a force that won't fight back. It's cowardly and offensive. Manchin has clearly been the ringleader here, but when a man does it it's statesmanship, according to Lawrence O'Donnell. It's more respectable if you've been behaving this way for a long time already. Free pass.

You're likewise correct when you point out that that kind of cultural sexism really does apply even (especially really) at the highest levels of politics. I thought Chris Hayes's observations last year on how even Donald Trump and his supporters gave Joe Biden lots of free passes that they hadn't to Hillary Clinton and their fixation on her and penchant for even blaming what they perceive as Joe Biden's faults on other people rather than the actual 2020 Democratic nominee was absolutely spot-on:

I don't do these things. I blame President Biden for his own faults and treat Joe Manchin no more favorably than Kyrsten Sinema. And while I too am human, flawed, and inescapably part of the patriarchal culture in which I live, most of the time I use gendered slurs like "bitch" I'm describing myself. But I am a conscientious feminist in a way that probably most people aren't.

That said, while your point about Sinema's groundbreaking victory in Arizona is taken, as to the significance of Kyrsten Sinema having run for her current Senate seat as a woman, I would point out that her Republican opponent in that particular election was also female: Martha McSally. I hence think the role of sexism in that particular election was minimal.

I would also point out that Mark Kelly also ran as a "moderate" Democrat, which in his case meant in opposition to certain major economic planks of the Progressive Caucus like single-payer health care and the abolition of tuition at all of America's public colleges and universities, this sort of thing. Kelly's support for the family bill, which is part of what Biden ran on, is consistent with this history. But I kinda get what you're saying though, as regardless of press labels, I, and I think most people really, think of Kelly as an ordinary, Biden-like social liberal and Sinema as more a kind of almost free-market libertarian (someone who is socially permissive or left wing, but fiscally conservative). "Moderate" is a term the press has redefined in recent years in such a way as to encompass both of these groups. Practically the only kind of Democrats the press doesn't describe as "moderate" these days are members of the Progressive Caucus and their voters, who are given an unfair virtual monopoly on the term "liberal" despite being a minority of self-described liberals in this country. It's a broadening of the term "moderate" that's not a match for how people actually describe themselves. I get what you're saying in that regard; Kelly is clearly to the left of Sinema (who is, after all, a member of the right wing Blue Dogs), which is why I respect the former more and you, as a more center-right person, have a higher opinion of the latter. But I'm just saying that neither of them ran as what we might call all-out defund-the-police leftists or something.

I invoked you because, as I recall, you've described yourself as someone who liked Donald Trump's personality (though maybe not his politics as much) and the connection to Sinema fandom just made sense to me, given that there's a similar penchant for extravagance and for what we might call trolling people, "owning the libs", doing anything for attention and without substance, this kind of narcissistic mentality between them that I've observed. Maybe it's their somewhat similar personalities that you're drawn to, I suspect, and which the rest of us find repugnant.

As to 27% of registered voters in the survey I linked to not having an opinion of Sinema, something generally similar is true across all the polls. Even the one you supplied finds that fewer people are familiar with her than with Mark Kelly, and so fewer Arizonans have formed an opinion of her as yet. It's a familiarity issue that these sorts of nationally-publicized antics may do a lot to resolve.

Libertine/Progressives and far right wing conservative amused with each other.

Mainstream media are giving air time to Progressives which has been rare in the past even though their polices are hugely popular and politically pragmatic, they are now allowing criticism of so called "Moderates" mainly the result (to his credit) of Biden holding fast on wanting to get all aspects of the $3.5 Trillion bill across, not willing to be held hostage by two Corp Dem senators 

Do you remember how over the summer I kept pointing to poll data suggesting that most of the groups forming the traditional base of the Democratic Party -- women, working class voters, and people of color --  were losing faith in President Biden? Well Nate Cohn of the New York Times has noticed it as well. In his recent article, Biden's Slide With Key Voters: Momentary Blip or Danger Sign?, he specifically highlights Biden's serious struggles with the core of the Obama coalition...

...and offers a number of possible explanations that are seriously worth reading. Strongly recommended article!

As to Cohn's core question of whether these shifts are just temporary, I would be inclined toward the view that they're probably not, especially at this point. From the day after the fall of Kabul, I've seen it posited that Biden's resultant drop in popularity might just be temporary and that, once the pullout concluded and the issue dropped out of the news cycle, Biden and the Democrats may recover. It's been over a month now since the withdrawal concluded and President Biden is currently at the lowest polling average of his presidency: just 43.4% of Americans approve of his job performance while 50.3% disapprove, meaning he's now underwater by about 7 percentage points on average. Those are Trump-like numbers. That's the territory we're in now. So yeah, I'm gonna say that this is more than a blip on the radar. 

What's more, this week's survey most closely aligning with said polling average suggests there could be real down-ballot consequences to that, as Republicans now statistically tie Democrats on a generic midterm ballot. One sees further evidence in that Virginia's Democratic candidate for Governor in the state's upcoming off-year election set for next month, Terry McAuliffe, has stopped campaigning with Biden because "the president is unpopular here in Virginia", i.e. a political liability rather than an asset to Democratic candidates. A recent survey of Virginia voters conducted by Emerson College indeed found that the Biden endorsement made 39% of voters less likely to support McAuliffe while driving just 22% in his direction. Cook Political Report currently projects the race as a toss-up, meaning it's a statistical dead heat too close to call...which is significant considering that Biden carried the state by a 10-point margin last year!

Speaking of the Virginia Governorship race, McAuliffe has taken it upon himself lately to weigh in on the current budget fight taking place in Congress on the side of Senators Manchin and Sinema, griping that the family bill in particular is too costly. Inspiring shit. Meanwhile, McAuliffe's Republican opponent, Youngkin, in contrast to the now-infamous Larry Elder of California, is a more traditional, Reaganist type of Republican less given to conspiracy theories and xenophobic proclamations who is campaigning primarily against school instruction in critical race theory and gender identity policies. Polling suggests that Youngkin's position that parents should have more say in the formation of school policies is broadly popular. I agree with it myself. It's about the only thing he's championing I do support, but yeah, it's probably a winning wedge issue because recent efforts by Democrats from the White House down to classify parents protesting school policies as "domestic terrorists" and have them investigated by the FBI under the Patriot Act are flatly absurd and even more blatantly anti-democratic in spirit. I hereby predict he'll win. That might not be great for the people of Virginia, but if to search out a silver lining, perhaps a victory for Youngkin, coupled with the epic defeat of Elder in California's recent recall vote, might cause more Republicans to re-evaluate the merits of nominating their most extreme candidates possible just because a certain unpopular former president thinks they should. It might help the narrative of the Reaganists and work to the detriment of the Trumpists in the party's factional wars...which is a prospect appealing to me in the sense that I'd rather this country not even consider electing Donald Trump president again in a few years time.

Anyway, getting back to the national picture, while there are an abundance of problems in this country right now that I've spoken to at-length many times here, allow me to suggest that the Taliban's complete victory in Afghanistan, more than other factors, is the factor that has done the most lasting damage to the American psyche. That was the real turning point whereafter Biden's poll numbers turned upside down and have yet to even begin recovering.

...In more satisfying news, according to the aforementioned (and linked) poll by Politico, there are Democrats in our government who poll worse than the president (in every region of the country, mind you) and two of them are Senators Manchin (underwater by 12 points) and Sinema (underwater by 9 points). To confirm a point I've sought to make over and over again now about the inaccuracy of the press characterizations of those two as "moderates", as you can see, in reality Americans describing themselves as politically moderate have even more negative opinions of the both of them. There is one demographic, however, with whom these two Senators survey as popular: conservatives. This has been precisely my point. There is no factual basis on which to associate people like me with these characters.

The Politico survey also suggests a potential solution to some of the Democratic Party's current unpopularity: by double-digit margins, large pluralities of Americans say that Biden and the Congressional Democrats have done less than they expected in general. Perhaps actually passing some bills for a change might help, in other words. A thought.

Maybe its just me but its hard to really care about Biden popularity. I know since I am neither Dem nor Republican, I never cared if Biden was popular or not. What always interest me more is the political strategy each side use to gain those precious votes. When all is said and done, those popularity polls mean nothing until there is someone going up against that person to compare to. What I am more interested in is to see if Trump actually will announce a presidential run for 2024. I am really hoping he does but my gut tells me its still a ploy to get paid and play things behind the scenes. The bigger play which I find interesting that can happen is if the GOP get the House and make Trump the speaker. Now we are talking about some real fun happening that should blow everything to hell and back. I can see him trying to impeach Biden over Afghanistan and who knows what else he would like to bring up. I believe the speaker ploy is a better avenue for him because his ego really cannot take getting beat a 2nd time by Biden and the risk of defeat is of course extremely low. If that happens, I am calling my favorite popcorn vendor and getting the year supply because things are going to be very interesting.

This would be a more interesting turn of events overall, but I still think Trump becoming Press Secretary in 2024 would be the funniest.

The GOP Prez could basically get away with murder because the only thing the media could focus on and complain about is Trump.