Left Fumes at Axios for Noting Sinema’s Bisexuality Does Not Translate to Wokeness

Leftist publications are seething in the wake of an Axios article published on October 1 that highlights Sen. Krysten Sinema’s (D-AZ) bisexuality does not automatically equate to wokeness.

Allies of Sinema informed Axios that the senator would not be bullied into “supporting President Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget bill: She doesn’t play by Washington’s rules — and she’s prepared to walk away,” according to Hans Nichols’ article.

The piece goes on to suggest the fact that Sinema is bisexual does not translate to an endorsement of the radical woke agenda as some progressives may assume.

“Progressives could be forgiven for presuming that Sinema, 45, the first openly bisexual member of Congress, who’s easy to spot in her trademark sleeveless dresses, wry wigs and acrylic glasses, would share their woke politics,” wrote Nichols.

The statement triggered a number of leftist outlets, including LGBTQ Nation and the Washington Post. 

“But Axios, a beltway news outlet, decided to defend her in an odd way: by tying her obstruction to her bisexuality,” wrote Alex Bollinger of LGBTQ Nation.

“Bisexual people – like people of any sexual orientation – can belong to any political ideology, and social media users called out Axios for making Sinema’s obstructionism about her bisexuality,” Bollinger added.

Phillip Bump of The Washington Post was critical of the Axios article as well, suggesting that the word woke is a pejorative used on the right to describe those on the left who are overly concerned about race:

It’s not uncommon for a word or phrase that has some limited purpose in some group to be elevated into something broader. “Woke” is such a word; one used to describe an awareness of the world that has now been embraced by the political right as an often sardonic descriptor. It doesn’t really mean anything specific in its current political iteration, being used mostly as a shorthand for people who, in the eyes of the user, are focused on race in a way that is deemed excessive or dangerous. It’s a pejorative, in short, a hand-wave about the left and its purported obsession with race.

Bump went on to express that Axios’s use of the word woke “makes no sense in the context of that description of Sinema.”

“From the left’s standpoint, the issue isn’t that Sinema doesn’t support their politics on race; she does, wrote Bump. “The problem is that, like other moderate Democrats, she doesn’t support policies aimed at bolstering the social safety net or increasing taxes on wealthy Americans. This is “woke” only if you assume that the exercising of government power to aid the less fortunate is centrally an effort to help non-White Americans — a group that is disproportionately poor.”