When asked about the harassment, President Joe Biden gave tepid criticism of those who accosted her, and strangely said that this behavior is “part of the process.”

Members of the activist media cheered the individuals who harassed Sinema in public. They published op-eds complaining about her decision to represent her constituents instead of just going along with what the party wants.

On Monday, The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg published a piece titled “What’s Wrong With Kyrsten Sinema?” in which she attempted to psychoanalyze the senator to determine why she didn’t just get with the program like a good little progressive. She wrote:

People sometimes describe the Arizona senator as a centrist, but that seems the wrong term for someone who’s been working to derail some of the most broadly popular parts of Joe Biden’s agenda, corporate tax increases and reforms to lower prescription drug prices. Instead, she’s just acting as an obstructionist, seeming to bask in the approbation of Republicans who will probably never vote for her.

Goldberg also called out the senator for not fully displaying her policy positions. “It sometimes seems as if what Sinema wants is for people to sit around wondering what Sinema wants,” she opined.

The author then likens Sinema to the late GOP Sen. John McCain, who also refused to go along with the Republican Party. She wrote:

But people admired McCain because they felt he embodied a consistent set of values, a straight-talking Captain America kind of patriotism. Despite his iconoclastic image, he was mostly a deeply conservative Republican; as CNN’s Harry Enten points out, on votes where the parties were split, he sided with his party about 90 percent of the time.

Sinema, by contrast, breaks with her fellow Democrats much more often. There hasn’t been a year since she entered Congress, Enten wrote, when she’s voted with her party more than 75 percent of the time. But what really makes her different from McCain is that nobody seems to know what she stands for.

In the article, Goldberg notes that Sinema wrote a book in which she describes how she found self-actualization when she learned to “open up my own ways of thinking to embrace a much larger possibility than the strict party-line rhetoric I’d been using.”

The senator explained that she learned to have meetings with lobbyists that were “relaxed and comfortable” even if they disagreed on policy positions. However, Goldberg argued that Sinema’s self-actualization was related to “operating in the minority, not exercising power” and asserts that now that Democrats have the power, the senator should abandon her focus on bipartisanship and operating on principles.

Goldberg quoted Emily Kirkland, executive director of Progress Arizona, a group that worked to get Sinema elected. She said:

I think she’s just really invested in that self-image, personally, as someone who stands up to her party, and I think she has really lost track of what is actually politically prudent, even to put aside the impact on the lives of millions of people.

The author ends her piece by proclaiming:

There’s a difference, it turns out, between being a maverick and being a narcissist.

Perhaps the question we should be asking is “What’s wrong with The New York Times?” In fact, it might even be better to ask what is wrong with people like Goldberg and her ilk, who don’t seem to understand the role of a lawmaker.

Sinema is in the Senate to represent the interests of her constituents, not the President of the United States or the whole of the Democratic Party. She, along with Manchin, do not represent solidly blue states, and they are painfully aware of the fact that much of what the far-left is pushing in Congress is not popular with those who put them into office.

Moreover, while the word “bipartisanship” has become verboten to many on both sides of the political divide, there are still some who believe that it is not desirable for one party to run roughshod over the minority while pushing through an agenda that might not be popular with most of the public.

The reality is that someone like Sinema, who is standing on principle, is destined to be a thorn in the side of far-left progressives who believe they should get their way no matter what. Indeed, these are folks who don’t understand the concept of having principles because, for the most part, they don’t have any.

These people believe that a Democratic senator should vote for the party’s agenda regardless of how their constituents feel because their mission is more important than the people it might affect. This is what is wrong with The New York Times and most other activist media outlets.