SALENA ZITO: Wake up, progressives: You’re lucky to have Kyrsten Sinema.

Sinema, along with fellow centrist Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has recently become the epicenter of American politics largely because she insists on siding with the interests of her constituents instead of the demands of her party. Over the past few weeks, she has refused to support the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill — a social spending package with an initial $3.5 trillion price-tag (now $2 trillion) to fight climate change, fund child care and universal pre-K, and extend the expanded child tax credit.

Progressives saw her stance as a betrayal, and she has been hounded by activists. At Arizona State University, where she is a lecturer, angry protesters followed her as she left a classroom and headed into a nearby restroom, chanting: “We need a Build Back Better plan right now!” Others demonstrated outside a private wedding she officiated in Bisbee, Arizona.

But Sinema has never been the “Prada Socialist” she once jokingly called herself in a 2006 interview with the now-shuttered fashion magazine 944.

Ever since January, the ruling class has expressed shock that she opposes the elimination of the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. But she has held this view for the entire six years she served in the House and the three years she has spent in the Senate.

If you don’t toe the line 100%, they treat you as an enemy. The left demands abject submission.