As Democrats struggle over how, exactly, to resist the assaults President Donald Trump is carrying out on the US government, there has been a sole politician enlivening thousands of ordinary people across America: Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator and two-time presidential candidate is now 83 and will not seek the White House again, but he’s doing what so few other Democrats are daring to do: he regularly holds rallies and denounces Trump. And there’s a bit of irony in the performance because Sanders is a nominal independent who spent much of his career railing against the Democratic establishment. Voters who were sceptical of his self-described democratic socialism are now flocking to his rallies and praising him online because he offers hope in what is a dark moment for America’s baulky republic.
Sanders, too, has a clear message – blame oligarchy. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been deputised by Trump to dismantle much of the government, firing at least 100,000 federal workers and eviscerating all kinds of essential programmes and agencies. Though Trump won the popular vote, most Americans didn’t sign up for this. They hoped Trump would combat inflation and make the nation a more dynamic place. They liked his tough talk on immigration. Now, they’re forced to confront another four years of chaos that will, at the very minimum, weaken essential functions of the bureaucracy.
Sanders knows this. He has never been one to poll-test messages or think overly hard about what should be done next. He’s earnest. One of his recent rallies in Denver drew more than 30,000 people, a remarkable showing, and it’s obvious he has the gumption to stand up to Trump. Just as important, he understands how to inspire people.
One uncomfortable undercurrent of Sanders’ success is that it has taken an octogenarian to do what so few other mainstream politicians seem capable of – and, for the American left, kicked up fresh questions about what comes next. Sanders can’t do this forever. His successor might be the 35-year-old congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), but she is more polarising than him and it’s not clear yet she’ll be able to build the same large, multi-racial coalitions Sanders has if she runs for president. Of late, AOC has joined Sanders on the road, and she certainly gets that Democrats are hunting for a fighter.
What is also missing from the much-needed Sanders extravaganzas are concrete next steps. Since Democrats are currently locked out of power in Congress, there’s not much they can realistically do to stop Trump and the Republican Party. It’s cathartic to show up at a rally but, in the short term, not a great deal will change. For progressives and leftists in particular, it might be time to think harder about the nature of rallies themselves. Yes, they are vital, and the rank-and-file enjoy a good show. But what, organisationally, is coming from this? What durable political organisations are getting built?
The fact is, America, even with its hardened duopoly, has two hollow political parties. A Democrat or Republican doesn’t pay a membership due to join – in fact, depending on the state you live in, there’s no formal process at all. The parties, these days, are little more than fundraising vehicles. Many of the old political “machines” are long dead, and the physical clubhouses that regularly used to attract members are vanishing. Identifying with a political party in America is a bit like being a secularised affiliate of a major religion. You might be a Catholic or a Jew, but you’re not showing up for mass or keeping kosher. It’s more an idea than anything else – one that is, to be fair, ultimately unshakeable. Getting a Democrat or Republican to cross party lines in 2025 isn’t much easier than convincing a person to switch faiths.
For progressives, leftists, and socialists to achieve greater political power, one of their only options is to take over these hollow institutions from the inside. Trump accomplished something similar with his Maga movement, obliterating a generation of Republican elites in the span of a decade. Since Sanders could not win the Democratic nomination, he never got the chance to solidify left-wing populism, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum have done in Mexico. Absent a presidential victory, Sanders has continued to organise from the outside with mixed success. After his first presidential run, he started a new organisation to boost progressive Democrats called Our Revolution. Yet though it launched to much fanfare, Our Revolution was never a significant factor in American elections. It endorsed candidates and doled out some money but did little else.
If Sanders had more of an organisational bent to him, he might consider how these mass rallies could be harnessed for the cause of furthering the left in America. So far, it’s not clear he’s thought that far. Rallygoers aren’t asked to join any kind of new political group. Our Revolution, certainly, is an afterthought. Yet the momentum behind these rallies is exciting, at least, and these grim times call for fresh energy. Bernie Sanders offers that, if the way forward remains quite murky, even as Trump’s popularity falls.
[See also: The Democrats’ toothless resistance]
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