The Reason for Sinema's Defection

    Why did Senator Sinema break from the rest of the Democrats and vote against abolishing the filibuster?  Because she's a Senator from Arizona, and she knows something of Arizona history, that's why.

    Look, we all know that the point of getting rid of the filibuster was to allow the Democrats in the Senate to pass HB-1, which would have put the federal government in charge of all elections rather than allowing the states to continue conducting their elections by themselves.  Never mind that, if passed, HB-1 would certainly be found unconstitutional;  the Democrats, and particularly those advising Biden, badly want to get it passed in time to apply it to the 2022 and 2024 elections before it gets knocked down in court.  The motive for this is pretty obvious, given Biden & Co.'s plummeting popularity ratings.  Their usual claim to support the proposed law is that, if election conduct is left up to the states, then of course the "red" -- i.e. majority- Republican -- states will cheat.  

    Nothing is said about majority-Democrat states cheating, even though Democrat states and municipalities have been notorious for election-fraud since at least the days of Boss Tweed.  Over more than a century and a half of such cheating, the Democrats have become quite good at it -- much better than the Republicans.  Having grown up within walking distance of Newark, New Jersey, and having lived for a dozen years in Chicago, I can attest that the old cliche' is true;  Republicans cheat by pushing people off the registration rolls, while Democrats cheat by stuffing the ballot-boxes.  I can tell you in some detail how this is done.  If somebody registers to vote (any party) and then misses one election, s/he will automatically be "purged" off the registry in a Republican state and will  have to register again to vote in the next election.  In a Democrat state, s/he will find that s/he's still on the rolls, but his/her party registration has changed to Democrat -- and somehow somebody with that registration will always vote in all elections thereafter. 

    In the hoo-raw that followed the 2020 elections, a good number of states decided to overhaul their election systems.  These reforms included demanding voter identification for state and federal elections;  now registering voters have to show proof that: a) they are who they say they are, b) they live where they say they live, c) they are at least 18 years old, and d) they are American citizens.  The Democrats, who famously solicit votes among not-necessarily-legal immigrants, refer to this as "voter suppression".  Note that New York City this year passed a law blatantly allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections, and so have eleven towns in Maryland and two in Vermont.  The federal law, if passed, would not require strict voter identification for federal elections, such as the state laws do;  the opportunities for fraud are obvious.

    So why would the Senator from Arizona be especially opposed to this?  Consider our state's history.  Back in the 1970s, the ACLU and SPLC were busy ruthlessly applying the punitive portions of the Civil Rights Act to states with bad records of keeping Blacks from voting.  In Arizona, they managed to find one bigoted poll-captain who was caught "losing" non-White votes (most of them Navajo and Latino, Blacks being actually scarce in Arizona), and that was enough to put Arizona elections under federal control for the next 30 years.  For those three decades, it's not surprising, Arizona's votes faithfully paralleled those of the rest of the country. 

    This is odd, because Arizona's demographics are very different from the rest of the US.  Arizona is not a "red" state or a "blue" state;  it's a weird state.  For one thing, this is one state in the union where the Indians (ooh-ooh, Native Americans;  ooh-ooh, Aboriginal Peoples;  ooh-ooh, First Nations...  Ah hell, Indians) didn't lose, and Whites are not a majority.  Whites make up a little over 30% of the population, the assorted tribes of the Navaho Nation comprise a little under 30%, Latinos almost exactly 30%, Blacks a little under 5% and Asians a little over 5%.  The Indians also own outright a good one-sixth of the state's land, including some of the best silver mines, and they own and run all the legal casinos.  They're a formidable voting-bloc and have considerable clout in the state's economy.  This should have been reflected in the election results, but somehow it never was.  Finally, in 2003, the Navaho (when they say their lawyers are real Apaches,  they mean it) hauled their case to the Supreme Court, which finally knocked down the federal government's control of Arizona's elections and handed it back to the state.  In the years since, Arizona's election outcomes have differed noticeably from those of other states.  It's common knowledge here that if you want to succeed in politics, you do not annoy the Indians.  

    Arizonians in general, and the Indians in particular, do not want the federal government running our elections again.  

    So it's not surprising that Sinema voted against ending the filibuster and passing HB-1.  Democrats and their media pundits, who don't understand Arizona at all, mutter darkly that Sinema must have been bribed by Big Pharma.  This is odd, considering that there are very few pharmaceutical companies in Arizona, all of them small and specialized, and none of them have anything to lose or gain if HB-1 passes or not.

    I can think of another reason, much closer to home.

    --Leslie <;)))>< Fish