Kyrsten Sinema and the Myth of Political Independence

Lee Drutman wrote for The Atlantic to discuss Kyrsten Sinema's switch from Democrat to Independent in a partisan system.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema says she’s had enough of partisan squabbling. Who hasn’t? But the former Democrat’s switch to independent earlier this month won’t solve anything. Sinema is still bound by the parties, no matter which letter—D, R, or I—appears next to her name.

True independence in our partisan system is a fantasy. Like the two other independent senators, Sinema will continue to vote almost entirely like a Democrat. She is what the political scientists Samara Klar of the University of Arizona and Yanna Krupnikov of SUNY–Stony Brook would call an “undercover partisan”—someone who behaves mostly like a partisan but publicly rejects partisanship to show their disdain.

Sinema’s own words show the fallacy in her reasoning. “While Arizonans don’t all agree on the issues, we are united in our values of hard work, common sense, and independence,” she wrote in The Arizona Republic, announcing her newfound political identity. What is “united in … independence”? How do we agree on anything if we are all independent?

Imagine a Senate of 100 true independents. How would they organize? How would they decide what to vote on, when, and under what procedure? Political parties always emerge in legislatures; the same Framers who fretted over political parties when writing the Constitution formed parties in the very first U.S. Congress, when they had to govern. Parties are necessary to organize sustainable coalitions and build governing majorities. In politics, power belongs to groups, not individuals. Politics involves organizing, choices, and affiliations. Parties are the institutions that turn chaos into politics, as bad as politics may still be.

Despite the necessity of parties, the idea of political independence is alluring to many people. “Independent” has been by far the most popular self-identification in U.S. politics for a good three decades now, hovering at about 40 percent of the electorate in recent years—which is not to say that the members of this group are united in their independence. Contrary to common conception, independents are not the same as moderates. Rather, they tend to be simply more dissatisfied with politics than people who identify as partisans are. In the 2016 primaries, independent voters preferred Bernie Sanders (who, like Sinema, is also an independent) to the party’s more traditional candidates. Other leading independents, such as Senator Angus King of Maine and former Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, are similarly, well, dissimilar, at least when it comes to their policy preferences.