Maybe it’s time President Joe Biden calls off his dogs.
Or perhaps coercion is the point.
Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a key holdout against the White House’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan, was stalked and later harassed in a public restroom this weekend by male and female activists who stood outside her stall with cameras, demanding she support the Biden administration’s partisan social benefits and climate spending bill.
From the moment the senator entered the bathroom to the moment she left, the cameras never stopped recording.
The incident took place Saturday at Arizona State University, where Sinema has served as an adjunct professor since 2003.
“We knocked on doors for you to get you elected and just like how we got you elected we can get you out of office if you don’t support what you promised us,” an activist said, threatening the senator as she entered a bathroom stall and shut the door behind her. The activist, a woman, revealed later she is an illegal immigrant.
A male protester filmed his female counterpart as she herself filmed the senator’s bathroom stall.
The progressive group Living United For Change uploaded footage of the incident to social media.
“Blanca, an AZ immigrant youth confronts [Sen. Sinema] inside her classroom,” the group bragged on social media, “where she teaches [at] ASU.”
“I was brought here to the United States when I was three years old and in 2010 my grandparents both got deported because of S.B. 1070,” said Blanca. “And I’m here because I definitely believe that we need a pathway to citizenship.”
Another activist shouted at Sinema’s bathroom stall door, “We need the Build Back Better plan right now.”
The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 69-30 this week to approve a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Sinema was one of the measure’s many “yea” votes. However, the bill’s passage has hit a snag in the Democratic-controlled House, where the Progressive Caucus is withholding support until the Senate approves a separate $3.5 trillion bill funding everything from free community college, to new dental, vision, and hearing benefits for the Medicare health insurance program, to various programs to fight climate change. The $3.5 trillion measure also provides additional funding to historically black colleges and universities, as well as a pathway to residency for “millions of immigrant workers and families.”
Sinema and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, for their part, are not on board with the social spending bill’s proposed dollar amount.
So, now we have a stalemate. House progressives won’t budge on the Senate’s bill unless their demands are met, and two Democratic senators have signaled they aren’t going to budge on the House’s demands until at least the price tag comes down substantially.
The Senate is split evenly at 50-50. In other words, the White House needs both Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes to pass both the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 social welfare and climate reconciliation bill.
Stalking and harassing a U.S. Senator while she attempts to do her business in the bathroom hardly seems the most persuasive method. Then again, when it comes to left-wing agitation, persuasion rarely seems the point. It’s usually straight coercion.
