Democrats in Washington and across the country have been wondering the same thing for months: how they can wear down Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. The answer might be that they can’t.
Sinema, a political progressive turned moderate, is holding President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” social spending bill hostage, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Biden, along with White House officials and Democratic activists, have tried nearly every imaginable strategy to get Sinema to abandon or soften her demands. Those demands include the House passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill first, shrinking the overall size of the “Build Back Better” bill and abandoning income-tax rate hikes for corporations and high-end earners.