Why do conservative Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin oppose wildly popular progressive policy measures? Because it’s a very lucrative racket.

Much ink has been spilled trying to understand what’s motivating senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) to try to gut so many of the popular progressive policies in Democrats’ health care, climate, and anti-poverty spending bill. Why would the senators be so content angering their base and potentially threatening their chances of winning reelection down the road?

During the fight over Democrats’ social spending reconciliation bill, Sinema, for example, has played a prominent — albeit silent — role in watering down the party’s plan to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. She’s also helped gut Democrats’ plan to expand Medicare benefits, nixed tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, and pushed to make the overall bill smaller. While Sinema isn’t up for reelection until 2024, she is polling terribly and already facing the threat of a well-financed primary challenge.

While Manchin has a personal financial interest in protecting the fossil fuel industry, he’s also worked diligently to deny new Medicare dental benefits that seniors in his state desperately need. Manchin has been on a fundraising tear this year, despite stating last week that he hasn’t decided whether he’ll run for reelection in 2024.

To understand what’s in it for conservative Democratic senators who play the party’s rotating villain role, look at those who came before them: many of those who do big business’s bidding and then either fail to win reelection or retire quickly end up scoring lucrative careers on K Street. It’s the ultimate win-win situation.

All of the former Democratic senators who publicly opposed a public health insurance option during the Obama administration, for example, ended up joining the influence industry — becoming lobbyists or corporate consultants, or working at a corporate-funded think tank, according to a Daily Poster review of publicly available records.

Today, with Democrats in control of Washington, corporate America has been relying on some of these former Democratic senators-turned-influence-peddlers to use their gravitas and personal relationships to help limit President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda bill and make sure lawmakers don’t pass anything that could threaten anyone’s profits.

It’s not hard to imagine Sinema and Manchin joining their ranks in the future. In fact, statistically speaking, it would be more surprising if neither of them did.

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