Photo Credit: NBC News
Last week we spoke at length about the chaos that has descended onto the Arizona GOP by way of Hurricane Kari and her undercover recordings/blackmail attempts. Unsurprisingly, many people have since lost faith in her; while the party has strayed very, very far from its Reagan-era principles, the commandment that “thou shall not talk bad about a fellow Republican” is one that is still sacrosanct for many, and it was blown to smithereens by Lake.
We have also spoken about how this helps Ruben Gallego and gives him a significant opportunity to rise above the madness. But what if we had it wrong all along?
What if the advantage actually goes to Kyrsten Sinema? Because that actually makes some sense.
First, there is the elephant in the room: Joe Biden. While the race between Biden and Trump will likely be close in Arizona, Biden won’t keep it competitive with a sky-high favorability rating, but purely because of a strong degree of disdain for Trump. The Democratic brand is highly likely to be a drag on candidates, and while most voters will be inundated enough with campaign marketing to form some opinion on Gallego (or Lake) independent of their party, the D by the name won’t help.
Perhaps the most pressing item will be the reemergence of illegal immigration to the forefront of the national political conversation as Democratic areas far away from the border are now forced to acknowledge the burden that it has put on their areas. It has turned into likely the biggest failure to date of the Biden administration, one that is not felt more acutely in any state except Texas. It is now a subject that even most reasonable and informed Democrats would admit is an issue.
To his credit, Gallego has been proactive on this subject and is much pragmatic than idealistic with the topic. But he is a Democrat with an otherwise rather progressive voting record. And let’s be honest: for a portion of the voting public simply having a Latino name will imply (consciously or not) that he will be more accommodative towards immigration and thus on the wrong side of history.
Sinema has none of these issues. She has left the Democratic party long enough for most laymen and women to largely forget. She is unencumbered by the disdain for the two political parties. She gets to play the part of a non-partisan problem solver.
We’d like to take credit for seeing this ahead of time, but apparently we aren’t alone: conservatives are seeing her stealing their spotlight on this issue and are fighting back accordingly.
It was easy to see how this would be Sinema’s Swan Song; perhaps not even losing the election, but not even running in the first place. The recent news and party dissatisfaction may give added life to Sinema. She shouldn’t be counted out just yet.