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The floors were still sticky with champagne from Raphael Warnock's Dec. 6 win in the Georgia Senate runoff election when the Democrats' premier turncoat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, set off a grenade by announcing that she was leaving the party to become an independent. While she still plans to caucus with Democrats, it was obvious almost immediately that this maneuver was less about her plans as a legislator and more about carving herself a path to re-election in 2024.
The title of the Democrat most despised by other Democrats has changed hands between Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin many times over the past two years, but at this point the title is clearly hers. After the bizarre fixation with preserving the Senate's filibuster rule, the thumbs-down that doomed a minimum wage hike, the broad-daylight legislative grifting on behalf of the investor class, and the general unwillingness to explain or defend her choices in public, Sinema was already justifiably loathed by many.
So, on one level, you can't blame her for trying to find a different re-election strategy. After all, there's a better chance of Elon Musk being quiet for a whole day on Twitter than there is of Sinema getting through a Democratic primary in Arizona. It takes a special kind of political anti-talent to achieve under-water approval ratings from every demographic subgroup of your own state's voters without major scandals, and (admittedly sparse) available public opinion polling shows her getting mopped by her most likely primary opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego by nearly 60 points.
In other words, there is close to a zero percent chance of Sinema getting re-elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2024. And right across the aisle, there is a senator who in 2010 survived a primary defeat only to best both major party nominees as a write-in candidate. While Alaska no longer runs separate party primaries, Sen. Lisa Murkowski's reputation as the Republican version of Sinema, especially during the Trump administration, makes it unlikely she could win her own party's nomination. And yet there she is, fresh off another double-digit general election win as an independent in all but name.
Alaska is a special place, though, now represented in the House by a Democrat who ran on a pro-fish platform. More likely, Sinema is thinking of another losing VP candidate—Joe Lieberman, Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential election—who ran successfully for his Connecticut Senate seat as an independent after losing his party's primary in 2006. She just wants to cut out the messy "losing the primary" part.
By 2006, Lieberman had gone from vice presidential candidate to the Joe Manchin of his time, a thorn in the side of Democratic leadership and, to the base, the most prominent example of someone who seemed to side with the administration of George W. Bush more often than not. That reputation was not entirely deserved—there were eight Senate Democrats with more conservative voting records in the 108th Congress. But it was his support for the disastrous Iraq War, which he maintained long after the public had turned against it, that sealed his fate in the Democratic Party.
He drew a spirited primary challenge for his Connecticut Senate seat from millionaire and relative political novice Ned Lamont, and eventually lost narrowly. Rather than bowing out with dignity, Lieberman ran as an independent and won handily, besting Lamont by 10 points as the scandal-ridden and abandoned GOP nominee Alan Schlesinger drew under 10 percent. He then endorsed Republican John McCain against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and played a pivotal role in cutting a public insurance option out of the Affordable Care Act.
It was a nice story, at least for Joe Lieberman, but it will be a very difficult template for Sinema to follow. For one thing, Lieberman was had a net-positive public approval rating even when Lamont deposed him. More importantly, it's not 2006 anymore. The idea that Republicans in Arizona would essentially drop their nominee and line up behind Sinema is comical at best. We're talking about a state party that censured McCain's widow years after he died and that has been captured by the very worst elements of the GOP. Especially in today's highly polarized atmosphere, you can count on the Republican nominee—and there will be a serious one—to win 90 percent or more of self-identified Republicans no matter what Sinema does.
That means Sinema's ploy requires one of two things to happen: Either a Democratic Party terrified of losing the seat doesn't run a credible nominee, something she has no control over, and which is unlikely to happen, or she somehow outpolls both of the major party nominees. Given her underlying approval ratings, that seems highly improbable. There's not even any evidence to suggest she would take more votes from the Democrat than she would from the Republican—after all, she gets higher approval ratings from self-identified Republicans.
Sinema would do best to understand that her political problems have nothing to do with her political affiliation and everything to do with her dismal performance in office and terrible political instincts. Ditching her party won't save her in 2024, and Democrats can and should beat both her and the Republican nominee, finally giving Arizona voters the senator they thought they were getting in Sinema four years ago.
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
