Analysis
Sanders and AOC are 'fighting oligarchy' with a national tour
While the Democrats are agonizing over the loss of the working-class vote, and are doing so by going on podcasts and TV shows where they loudly proclaim their strategies to win it back, only Sanders seems to have figured out what to do.
On February 21, a month after Donald Trump's inauguration, Senator Bernie Sanders began hammering the Republican states with a series of rallies with a name that says it all: the Fighting Oligarchy Tour. He made his first stop in Omaha, Nebraska, followed by Iowa City and the northern states, each time drawing thousands of people in places that a few months earlier had voted for Trump. Not only the big cities, but also towns of 9,000 people of which 3,000 showed up to hear Sanders.
Skipping over the West Coast Democratic states, during the weekend Sanders had a schedule of 5 rallies in 3 days, divided between Nevada, Arizona and Colorado, where he was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the duo of an 83-year-old senator and a 35-year-old congresswoman, both avowed socialists, drew crowds the likes of which have not been seen since Obama's 2008 campaign. In Denver, Colorado alone, where Saturday's second rally was held, 36,000 people showed up – for comparison, that is about as many people as attended the Democratic convention in August.
While the Democrats are agonizing over the loss of the working-class vote, and are doing so by going on podcasts and TV shows where they loudly proclaim their strategies to win it back, only Sanders seems to have figured out what to do. With the “grassroots” approach he has always employed – going out and talking to people directly – and speeches that put forward the same program he has been advocating for decades: universal health care, lowering prescription drug prices, taxing the rich, free state college, strong unions, raising the minimum wage. The same program has been embraced and advocated for by AOC.
This is the content being promoted on the Fighting Oligarchy Tour. Addressing Trump directly, Sanders said from the stage in Tucson, Arizona: “We're not going to allow you and your friend Mr. Musk and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on the working families of this country. No, you're not going to destroy Social Security. You're not going to destroy Medicaid. You're not going to destroy the Veterans administration.” Ocasio-Cortez stepped in to add: “You know who the biggest criminals are in this country? They are the CEOs of major corporations who are robbing us every single day.”
One cannot accuse Sanders of merely adapting his message to the historical moment in which he finds himself – it is more accurate to say that he has been able to make sense of the crises of recent years, from the recession to the present. And, against the backdrop of the silence of the rest of the Dems, he is more popular than ever.
His message has not changed, but now it hits harder. Many Americans, even among those who voted for Trump, are reaching a breaking point: struggling to make ends meet, they wonder how much tougher things could get if a new recession comes. They also see the president defying the Constitution and devastating parts of the federal government that have always seemed essential and indestructible, and they fear that, sooner or later, the very limited public healthcare represented by Medicaid, or public schools and Social Security, will be eroded, with freedom of speech disappearing along with them. “We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington making cuts to the Social Security Administration,” Sanders told the crowd of 11,000 in Greeley, Colorado. “Cuts to the Veterans Administration. Almost destroying the Department of Education. All so that they could give over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1%.”
In Las Vegas, Nevada, AOC did not just attack billionaires and the GOP: “This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too.” After Sanders introduced her by name, something he had never done before, Ocasio-Cortez used her experience as a waitress to explain her political views to the crowd: “I don't believe in health care, labor and human dignity because I'm a Marxist. I believe it because I was a waitress, because I scrubbed toilets with my mom to go to school, because I've worked double shifts to keep the lights on and because on my worst day, I know what it feels like to feel left behind. And I know that we don't have to live like this anymore.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/lunica-resistenza-si-chiama-sanders-fermeremo-la-distruzione-di-trump on 2025-03-25