Thread by @HayesBrown

New from me: Kyrsten Sinema, we learned in an Axios article, has a secret weapon in her fight to winnow down Democrats' $3.5 spending plan — spreadsheets

…As you might guess, I was not impressed.

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

If you read the article, you wouldn’t get many more details than that.

Sinema doesn’t want Democrats spending too much.

She has spreadsheets tracking that spending.

That’s it.

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

So why does this article exist? Simple — to give Sinema the veneer of technocratic competency.

She has SPREADSHEETS. She is collecting DATA.

Which obscures something missing from the article: There’s no discussion of WHAT that data represents.

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

The senator is hoping that in showing her attention to data, we miss out on the fact that behind the numbers being crunched are actual policy choices, and actual Americans whose lives are impacted in the process

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

Really, this is just another version of a common theme from Sinema, a focus on aesthetic over actual policy. She wants to LOOK like a technocrat, much like she wants to LOOK like a moderate, and that involves cutting down budgets.

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

At least Manchin, for all I disagree with him, can point to areas of policy that he wants changed like on the Child Tax Credit’s requirements. Sinema, as of now, is still skimming the surface, hoping that her battle against the top line number is enough

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

tl;dr: Sinema's comms team would rather focus on SPREADSHEETS than anything that Sinema actually wants to cut from the Democrats' likely only shot at getting Biden's economic agenda passed

msnbc.com/opinion/sinema…

Deeply embarrassing to realize almost a full day later that I wrote “$3.5” in that tweet instead of “$3.5T.” If only I’d had a spreadsheet to check my numbers against.