{"id":20347,"date":"2021-10-26T12:59:09","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T19:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=20347"},"modified":"2021-10-26T12:59:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T19:59:22","slug":"sen-kyrsten-sinema-is-the-dying-scream-of-the-corporate-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/10\/26\/sen-kyrsten-sinema-is-the-dying-scream-of-the-corporate-democratic-party\/","title":{"rendered":"SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA IS THE DYING SCREAM OF THE CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

<\/a>Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 19, 2021.\u00a0Photo: Rod Lamkey-Pool\/Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinema\u2019s subservience to big moneyed interests is a holdover from an era of politics that is fading noisily into the past.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Ryan Grim<\/a>
October 22 2021, 9:35\u00a0a.m. (TheIntercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KYRSTEN SINEMA MIGHT be on the young side for a senator \u2014 less than half the age of some of her colleagues \u2014 but she represents the Democratic Party\u2019s past. Think of her and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., as the dead hands reaching out of the grave, grabbing at the party as it tries to move on from them. They might have managed to claw back spending on the Build Back Better Act, but the reality that their time has passed is clear. And the way you can measure this most directly is in terms of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sinema in particular, her approach to the negotiations \u2014 to push against social spending and tax hikes on the rich and corporations \u2014 has cost her badly in the polls at home and hasn\u2019t had much of an upside when it comes to campaign cash. Her model of politics is outdated, though it has been the dominant form for most of her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, in response to the Reagan Revolution and the ongoing realignment that broke what Democrats thought was a permanent stranglehold on Congress, the party developed what was called at the time a \u201cPAC strategy\u201d but today is just called fundraising. Republican candidates in 1980 had heavily outspent Democrats, who believed that their name recognition and long record \u2014 they implemented the New Deal, won World War II, enacted the Great Society, and so on \u2014 meant that the GOP was wasting money on television. When that turned out not to be the case, Democrats realized that they needed comparable money of their own, and the fundraising idea was that since Democrats still had durable control of the House of Representatives \u2014 they could cling to it for 14 years after Reagan\u2019s 1980 election \u2014 businesses that had interests before Congress needed to start ponying up for access.Raising corporate money is not actually that efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access quickly turned to alliance, and the party drifted heavily in a pro-business direction. These \u201cNew Democrats\u201d argued that the party had to beat back the power of special interests \u2014 and by special interests, they meant civil rights advocates, environmentalists, and labor unions. The presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson in 1988 pushed back against this hegemonic approach, but without a way to aggregate grassroots enthusiasm into the money needed for a national infrastructure, the threat was neutralized. Starting with Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential race, it finally started to look possible that a candidate funded by a large number of small, individual donations could compete with one funded by the rich and corporations. Technology was making it possible for people to quickly translate their enthusiasm not just into a honk and wave on a highway overpass, but also into actual money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama showed the promise of small dollars in 2008, but he also raised an insane amount of money from Wall Street \u2014 and, once in office, he abandoned the network of small donors he had built and went with the big money. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., nearly toppled the Clinton machine with his famous $27 contributions. In 2018, the small-donor revolution spread to normie Democrats, with anti-Trump, #Resistance liberals throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at congressional Democrats, enabling them to retake the House. In 2020, small donors did it again, and the resource-rich Democrats took both the House and Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ONE OF THE people who noticed this shift was Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., once known as Wall Street Chuck. But thanks to all of these small donors, he now serves as Senate majority leader. A lot of people have chalked up Schumer\u2019s pivot toward progressives as fear of a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and no doubt that\u2019s part of what\u2019s going on. Another factor is that Schumer is used to delivering for donors so that they keep the spigot flowing. And Schumer\u2019s donors are now rank-and-file Democratic activists throwing in $27 at a time. In 2020, 41 percent of the money raised <\/a>by Democratic Senate candidates came from donations of less than $200. What they want is to see Democrats fighting for what they ran on, so Schumer is happy to give them that fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schumer also knows that raising corporate money is not actually that efficient, because each one of these lobbyists or rich people requires coddling, demands intimate access, wants internships for their kids, wants a dinner and a speech and photo, and on and on. Small donors just want you to win and then deliver what you promised. They don\u2019t expect to ever meet you unless they\u2019re volunteering at a headquarters where you happen to stop by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the summer, Sinema showed just how much work it is. For the past few months, we were treated to endless stories about Sinema skipping important events in Washington to be at this or that fundraiser and even leaving the country to go to Paris<\/a> to raise money. For all that trouble, Sinema broke her fundraising record, reporting $1.1 million in fundraising in third quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n