Sinema and Manchin, the Rotating Villains.

It’s always the same story. Every time.

Lauren Elizabeth
3 min readJan 2, 2022
AP Photos

In American politics and particularly among the Democratic party, the concept of a rotating villain is a core piece of how the lawmakers operate. After all, it makes their job a lot easier, doesn’t it? After spending months and months behind the scenes at high dollar fundraisers telling people — as is specifically the case with Joe Biden — that nothing would fundamentally change under their leadership, it certainly helps to have a few people who volunteer to make themselves the reason the campaign promises won’t get done.

Typically of course, Democrats would hide behind Republicans. Not only do they serve as a convenient obstacle, it provides the party with a convenient fundraising tool. After all, what better deal than to be able to protect the interests of their wealthy donors, have a convenient excuse for abandoning campaign promises to the base, and then get to fundraise on top of it? Unfortunately for the party though, they have the White Houses, the Senate, and the House of Representatives and the ability to nuke the Senate filibuster if they wanted to, so excuses are few and far between.

That hasn’t stopped them from trying though, and Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have been more than willing to step in as the reason why the party has been…

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Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx