Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sat down with Stephen Colbert this week to promote his new book It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism and was asked if he’ll miss Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who announced this week that she would not be seeking re-election. “Not at all,” he told Colbert without missing a beat.
Sinema is known for being a centrist Democrat who’s closest relationships in the Senate were with Republicans rather than members of her own party, and drew the ire of Democrats and her constituents when she and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) became frequent contrarians to the party’s initiatives.
The senator announced her intention not to run for re-election yesterday, saying, “I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now.”
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Sinema cited a distaste for the state of politics in the country as one of her reasons for not seeking re-election: “Despite modernizing our infrastructure, ensuring clean water, delivering good jobs and safer communities, Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners,” she said, adding that compromise had become a “dirty word.”
Sanders particularly took issue with Sinema’s lack of support on Biden’s Build Back Better plan, telling Colbert, “We worked with the president on something called Build Back Better,” he said. “We had zero Republican support. We had 48 people in the Democratic caucus prepared to transform this country on behalf of the working class of America.”
“Two people, Sinema being one, Manchin the other, refused to support it,” continued. “We couldn’t pass it. So no, I will not miss Senator Sinema.”
Sanders also took a moment during the show to address the impending rematch between Biden and Trump. “The media has fixated a little bit too much on age,” the 82-year-old senator remarked. “Age is a factor. But what you want to look at is the totality of the person and what he or she accomplishes.”
