Bernie Sanders is not running for president. But he portrays more crowds now than he was when he was campaigning for the White House.
The message has hardly been changed. Also, there is a shock and vibrant delivery of white hair, and there is no messenger. What's different now is that, according to the senator, his fear, a government captured by a billionaire who exploits workers — becomes an undeniable reality, and people are angry.
“For years, I've spoken about the concept of an Olihead as an abstraction,” independent Sanders, who voted with Democrats and twice called for the party's presidential nomination, spoke with New York's signature Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in an interview after a joint rally in Tempe, Arizona. The Vermont Senator recalled Donald Trump's inauguration. The three wealthiest people on the planet, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, sat in front of cabinet candidates, whom many consider to be a shocking display of power and influence.
“Don't understand that you have a billionaire class government for the billionaire class,” he said. “And on top of that, you're moving very quickly towards a society of authoritarian society where Trump is.”
Two months after Trump was sworn over a second term, a chorus of democratic activists and increasingly voiced voters say they are scared, angry and craving leadership. In the third act, the 83-year-old democratic socialist intervenes to fill the void.
However, his goal is not only to revive the anti-Trump resistance movement. He wants a bottom-up overhaul of the American political system.
“It's not just the Olihead that we fight. It's not just the authoritarianism that we fight,” Sanders told an arena full of Arizona State University supporters on Thursday night. “We don't accept today a society where we have large income and wealth inequality, where the very rich never got better while working families struggle to put food on the table.”
For weeks, voters have appeared at city halls to block warnings and rage over the president's aggressive grabs of power and massive shootings of Musk-led federal workers. But they also accused the Democratic leaders of the party that spent the entire election season warned of the threat Trump had posed on American democracy, but now they couldn't stand up to him or didn't want to hold back.
At the meeting in Tempe, several participants called for more rebellion.
“It's not enough to just lift up a paddleboard and spend time quietly or wear a pink blazer,” Mesa 20-year-old Alexandra Rodriguez said of the Democratic protests in Trump's speech to Congress earlier this month. “I think they need to go to extremes.”
Several attendees expressed anger towards Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer faced what was called a “Hobson's Choice” between supporting the Republican-written fundraising bill or incited government shutdowns, and fought for the Democrats' coalition to pass the spending measure. This decision unleashes a torrent of rage from his party base and forces him to postpone the book tour as he defends himself from a call to resign as leader. On a Western tour of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, New York representatives were interrupted by intermittent calls to “Primary Chuck!”
“This isn't just Republicans either. We need a Democrat who fights hard,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Arizona, drawing some of the event's loudest and most sustained applause. She urged participants to help select candidates “with the courage to fight for the working class.”
“We definitely need to be strong,” said Audrey Castro, 52, who said she was waiting for her to enter the venue Thursday night with her mother and aunt. “I want to regain democracy.”
InIn recent weeks, Democrats have tried to capitalize on the bubble rebound of the misguided opening months of Trump's second term. Following Sanders' lead, many Democrats will host city halls in Republican-owned districts, bringing attention to mask-innovative cost-cutting projects and Republican proposals, almost certainly bringing cuts to social safety net programs.
Robbie Lambert, 70, a retired special education teacher, said keeping up with the turmoil in Washington is beginning to feel like a full-time job. Just that afternoon, Trump had signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education.
“You feel helpless. Is that something we can do?” Lambert, who was on vacation in Arizona, said she had decided she had to attend the temperary. “Come with me and talk to people here and make me feel like you're doing something.”
Attending Thursday's rally, Arizona representative Yasamin Ansari said he had heard similar calls for action from members across the district this week, including events between LGBTQ+ business leaders and merciless town halls.
“People are really tired,” Ansari said in an interview.
For at least now, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the most prominent Democrats who offer both a strategy to stand up to Trump and an alternative vision for the party.
In 2024, Democrats lost support among young and Latino voters-core constituencies, and recent polls found the party's popularity. The worst ever. Few Democrats oppose their party needs to revise their course, but how much is it, and to what extent does it remain?
Supporters say the success of the Sanders Tour, which began last month in Omaha, Nebraska, is a clear indication that Democrats want to “roll over and play” as veteran strategist James Kerrville, but rather to actively fight what they consider to be Trump's invasive authoritarianism. Proposed With Op-Ed. They also view it as a supporter of Sanders' policy agenda, claiming that his brand of economic populism is suitable for this political moment.
According to a memo from longtime Sanders adviser Faiz Shaquille, the senator has been collecting more than $7 million from more than 200,000 donors since February, bringing crowds 25% to 100% larger than the heights of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
“We live in a populist moment now,” writes Shaquille. “It's not 'left and right'. It's “very top and everyone else.” “Title of his note: “It's a populist rebellion, stupid.”
tHe said the co-appearance she said by the 35-year-old New York representative and the Vermont Senator she said encouraged her to run for office. Several rallies in Tempe believed she could lead the party.
“Whenever I have something to say to the AOC, I listen,” said first responder Jonas Prado, 32.
“I hope she will be the first female president,” said mechanical engineer Norman Ellison, 60.
The arena also had a tint of oddity. He was holding a supporter wearing an old campaign t-shirt and hat, and a pin that one said, “Bernie was right.”
Having ruled out a third run for the president, Sanders, in vintage form, conveyed a legion of politically dissatisfied supporters' moral ferocity that has long loved him and a ferocious 50-minute criticism of the “top 1%.”
The senator has named him, accusing executives of the fossil fuel, insurance and pharmaceutical industry as “the major criminals,” and shares harsh statistics on US wealth inequality that elicit boos and shortness of breath from his audience. At one point, Sanders quoted analysis He was released by a Senate committee that found that wealthy Americans lived an average of seven years longer than poor Americans.
“In other words, being a working class in America is a death sentence,” he yelled.
Ocasio-Cortez's opening remarks were so intact. She accused his billionaires of Trump and Musk of EUs, “screwing” workers, who are “taking a destructive ball into our country.” “We're going to throw away these butts,” she declared.
While both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez share a political vision, their dual acts introduced the clear style of two progressive leaders on the other side of their career arc.
Ocasio-Cortez offered a more personal touch, weaving elements of the biographies into her speech. She spoke about her mother and her father's father who cleaned the house.
“Because I'm an extremist, I don't believe in healthcare, labor, or human dignity,” she said, pushing back her right-wing caricature. “I was a waitress so I believe in these things.”
She said she empathized with Americans who felt overwhelmed and disrupted, and encouraged them not to succumb to despair. “We don't do that,” shouted someone in the crowd.
When the event ended, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez left the arena and dealt with the overflow crowd who were unable to attend.
“This is where the future is,” 25-year-old Sebastian Santamaria gestured towards the empty podium decorated with “Oligarchy of Battle” placards. “As someone who has supported the Democrats in the past, I don't want to continue supporting you if they don't look like this.”
