Powerful Democratic consultants have dropped Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) since she disaffiliated from the Democratic Party to register as an Independent. Their departure will make it more difficult for her to win re-election in her home state if she runs again in 2024.

“NGP VAN, which manages Democratic voter data, is set to cut off Sinema’s access at the end of January, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation,” The Huffington Post reported. “The ad makers who worked with her in 2018, Dixon/Davis Media Group, have split with her campaign. Two other Democratic sources said polling firm Impact Research made the same decision.”

The departures are notable because they’ll limit Sinema’s ability to tout her political accomplishments in advertising and to reach voters who supported her in past elections. Current polling also suggests that she’d face an uphill climb in a future election.

Although Sinema hasn’t yet announced a re-election bid, Arizona Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton, are both expected to run for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. If she runs, she’ll likely face a three-way contest against a Democrat and a Republican in the general election.

A recent poll from PPP showed Sinema getting only 13 percent of support from state voters in a three-way race against Gallego (who got 40 percent) and gubernatorial-election-loser Republican Kari Lake (who got 41 percent). While it’s unclear whether Lake would even run for Senate following her narrow 2022 election loss, Sinema’s Independent bid could act as a spoiler for either candidate.

Sinema crafted bipartisan deals on same-sex marriage, gun control, and infrastructure funding, The Huffington Post notes. But she also has a reputation for opposing other social reforms that Democratic voters support, like minimum wage hikes and filibuster reform. She also gained additional favor with Republicans by blocking President Joe Biden’s (D) proposed tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations.

The real challenge for Democrats, if Sinema runs, will be to distance her from their party in a way that will cause her to split the Republican vote rather than the Democratic one.

While ignoring the pandemic and continuing to rail against “widespread voter fraud” on Twitter, President Donald Trump took a small moment Friday night to warn his followers about Georgia’s “illegal and invalid”January 5 special runoff elections that will determine which political party controls the Senate.

Then, on Saturday morning, Trump told his followers to vote in said “illegal and invalid election,” mentioning that he’ll be campaigning for the two incumbents on Monday night and adding, “GET READY TO VOTE ON TUESDAY!!!

In a three-Tweet thread (marked by Twitter as “disputed” and untrue), Trump wrote:

“Before even discussing the massive corruption which took place in the 2020 Election, which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States (only need three), it must be noted that the State Legislatures were not in any way responsible for the massive changes made to the voting process, rules and regulations, many made hastily before the election, and therefore the whole State Election is not legal or Constitutional. Additionally, the Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both “illegal and invalid”, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections. In Wisconsin, Voters not asking for applications invalidates the Election. All of this without even discussing the millions of fraudulent votes that were cast or altered!”

In short, Trump told his voters that the entire Georgia election is rigged, a sentiment shared by his legal team who have repeatedly blasted Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the state’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp for accurately declaring that Biden fairly won the state, thus contradicting Trump and his supporters’ baseless claims of widespread voter fraud (which, by the way, have been almost entirely rejected from courts for lack of evidence nearly 60 times over).

“It’s not going to matter how the people vote in the Georgia race,” former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell told The Rush Limbaugh Show on December 29. “It obviously didn’t matter how they voted nationwide, did it? … It might be that they’ve even rigged the system so that the two Republicans win.”

For months, Republicans have worried that Trump’s repeated claims that voter fraud made him lose Georgia in the November elections would discourage Republicans from voting in the January 5 election. Trump supporters pledged not to vote to help punish state Republicans who affirmed Biden’s victory.

While a majority of Republican congressional leaders have refused to publicly acknowledge that President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election, they’re nevertheless pledging to block Biden’s cabinet appointees.

MSNBC News contributor Hugh Hewitt quoted Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, who said, “It is hard for me to imagine they would nominate Susan Rice [for Secretary of State].”

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton also told Hewitt, “I cannot imagine a Republican Senate confirming Susan Rice to any position.”

Rice served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.

Rice recently said that the Trump Administration’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s presidential victory has posed national security risks. “They are proceeding in a fashion that is reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible,” she said, calling the president’s actions”[The] most irresponsible leadership during a transition I think any of us have seen in our lifetimes if not in the history of the republic.”

It’s widely expected that Senate Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will try to block Biden’s cabinet nominees as “radicals” and “extreme lefitsts”, although Biden could bypass their GOP obstructionism by using the Vacancies Act and the recess appointment clause of the U.S. Constitution to seat his cabinet anyway.

While most congressional Republicans have been silent about acknowledging Biden’s presidential victory, at least three Republicans have publicly voiced doubt that Biden actually won including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah; former Republican President George W. Bush; his brother, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; Republican Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan and 13 other Republican Congress members have all acknowledged that Biden won.