Sinema Will Survive Minimum Wage Vote Because Democrats Don’t Have Accountability Measures

Matt Vespa | March 11, 2021 12:40 PM

We all know that former operatives of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) campaigns have formed the No Excuses PAC to act as a sort of enforcement arm for the progressive Left. And yes, it’s no secret that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are top targets given that their politics aren’t hard-core Trotskyite. If anything, these two have become thorns in the side of their party’s left flank. Both are not keen on nuking the filibusters. Both were against adding a raising the minimum wage provision in the COVID relief bill. They weren’t alone. Sinema’s thumbs down vote was the Democrats’ ‘John McCain’ moment. The late Arizona Republican infamously flew back to DC amid his brain cancer fight to thrust the dagger into the back of the so-called ‘skinny' repeal of Obamacare.

Yet, in a state that’s more purple than red, there could be a shot that Sinema gets a primary challenger. It’ll be hard, but not impossible. In West Virginia, an effort to primary Manchin will only help Republicans. There isn’t a Democrat there who can win statewide in that ruby red GOP bastion.

Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, is not confident that Sinema is in trouble for her vote to kill a minimum wage increase, which she elaborated on the program Rising featured on The Hill TV. There’s a very simple reason, she said. The Democratic Party does not hold their own accountable (via The Hill):

Gray said that while there was outrage against Sinema, who went viral last week for her animated thumbs-down vote on the Senate floor, "I am still skeptical on some front that this is going to have a longer term tail on it, simply because these kinds of politicians, understand that the Democratic Party doesn't do very well when it comes to accountability measures."
"So, you know, there's not going to be really much in the way of accountability coming from the Democratic Party in terms of running ads against her instead or in terms of being willing to run against a party member," said Gray, host of the Bad Faith podcast.

Lyin' Biden. https://t.co/WkaIwf4Lik
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) March 5, 2021

I’m sorry, he tweeted this *after* Dems constructively killed the minimum wage hike? https://t.co/aQinVMy1qy
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) March 6, 2021

Joy is also a politics editor at the lefty publication, The Intercept, which was co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, who resigned after staff took issue with his piece that wasn’t rosy towards Joe Biden. She’s a hard-core progressive for sure and probably someone who wants Sinema out and the party to be transformed given who she worked for, but she also seems to be a realist too. Sinema isn’t going anywhere…for now.