If there’s anything worse than “cable news” (and a lot of that is pretty bad) it would have to be our three “national” networks, the perennial stalwarts of CBS, ABC, and NBC, particularly their prime-time 6:30 PM EST editions. My parents don’t have cable, so the only time I’m subjected to these dumbed-down news broadcasts is when I’m visiting them. Wednesday night was no exception, as these networks virtually leapt for joy, crowing about the wonderfully bipartisan infrastructure deal (ABC’s David Muir breathlessly preempted his own network’s segment by informing us that “Mitch McConnell is a ‘Yes!’) which in actuality is not yet a “deal” at all, since no one seems to have agreed yet how it will be paid for.

But whether the “bipartisan” infrastructure deal (which mostly funds traditional brick and mortar projects that in any non-dysfunctional nation would have been completed a decade ago) actually garners enough Republican votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, it won’t be much of a “victory” for Democrats. What would be an actual victory for Democrats would be passage through the budget reconciliation process of the wholly separate $3.5 trillion infrastructure package that funds everything that President Biden actually wanted, such as expanding Medicare coverage to include vision, hearing and dental, funding home health care for seniors and children with special needs, funding child care and family leave programs, providing for free community college, public housing and rental assistance, and combating climate change, among many other things that Republicans will never agree to. Of course, Reconciliation requires 50, rather than 60 votes, to pass. Since no Republicans will ever vote for the $3.5 trillion package, all Democrats must vote for it, or it doesn’t stand any chance of becoming law.

At the tail end of Wednesday’s Newshour segment, it fell to PBS’s Judy Woodruff to ask an otherwise ebullient Sen. Jon Tester about the fate of this far more comprehensive infrastructure bill:

The fate of this so-called companion $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill, money for home health care, for education, for the environment, what does its fate look like, and now that you have Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema saying she’s not going to vote for it? And you need Democrats on board.

Sen. Tester, somewhat deflated by the question, sputtered for a moment, then admitted he had only been focused on the bipartisan bill, but assured Woodruff that “When I go home, I hear about housing, I hear about child care, I hear about senior care all the time.”

Well, yeah, those issues are pretty important. So, it’s not surprising that many Democrats were more than a little alarmed when Sen. Sinema said “she’s not going to vote for it,” particularly as she timed this announcement of hers on Wednesday to practically coincide with the purported agreement on the bipartisan deal.

As Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo shrewdly reminds us, that’s exactly what Sen. Sinema wants us to feel: alarmed. Or more specifically, to feel as if she’s our only hope. In fact, these are just the kind of antics that she lives for. As Marshall notes, here is what Sinema actually said:

Marshall says this is par for the course for Sinema’s “Preening 101” approach to her job:

The key point here, from Marshall’s point of view, is that the Democrats’ other deficit scold, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, by all appearances thus far isn’t with Sinema on this one.

In Marshall’s opinion (and it seems reasonable), this is just more “look-at-me” drama from Sinema who doesn’t seem to realize that unlike Manchin (who miraculously manages to survive and thrive in an ultra-red state whose residents simply salivate for reasons to oppose Democrats and Joe Biden) her haughty, iconoclastic approach doesn’t resonate with her own constituents. As Marshall points out, there’s nothing—including its price tag—in the Reconciliation infrastructure package that is likely to bother Sinema’s constituent base. Rather, this appears to be strictly an ego-trip for Sinema, just like her infamous opposition to raising the minimum wage.

And for that reason, as Marshall opines, Sinema probably warrants a primary challenge: “She’s a destructive force in the Democratic caucus and Democratic politics generally.” Marshall makes a very good argument that these attention-grabbing antics by Sinema make it all the much harder for Arizona’s other Democratic senator, Mark Kelly, since Kelly is up for reelection in 2022 and in theory would like to be able to point to some type of achievements by a Democratic senate. The longer Sinema plays the prima donna for her own ego gratification, the more ammunition Republicans have against all Democrats, including Kelly.

However, the problem Democrats have to face, as Marshall acknowledges, is that in practice, primary challenges usually weaken the Democratic party structure, particularly in states that aren’t reliably blue to begin with, like Arizona. So that while  “ideally” the best result would be to primary Sinema in 2024, we risk fracturing the Democratic electorate in Arizona that voted her into office in the first place. As Marshall sees it, the more important focus is to add more Democrats to the Senate in 2022, so her penchant for preening is rendered irrelevant.