The playlist has stayed amazingly consistent. Bernie Sanders rails against the federal minimum “starvation wage” of $7.25 an hour. He decries climate change. He advocates for a “Medicare for All” single-payer plan to replace the wildly dysfunctional patchwork of American health care coverage. And the independent senator from Vermont hammers home how overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is a crucial step toward reversing the billionaire takeover of US democracy.
It will soon be 10 years since Sanders delivered all those prescient notes when officially announcing his first run for president in Burlington, Vermont. Last week he reprised his hits in a series of large rallies in Western states. “He’s been talking about these things for 40 years,” says Pete D’Alessandro, a senior adviser on both of Sanders’s presidential campaigns. “He doesn’t look at these big rallies like, I’m a rock star! It’s, Can we move these ideas into a bigger population to build the movement?”
A whole lot has changed in the last near decade, of course, including Sanders’s opening act. In May 2015, he was preceded onstage by environmentalist Bill McKibben, and while every crowd loves hearing from a writer, this month’s warm-up speaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, drew a far more passionate audience reaction. But this time around, she’s the one, not Sanders, whose presidential prospects are exciting the left.
That chatter has grown louder because of the overflow crowds that have turned out to hear Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez stir up resistance to President Donald Trump: an estimated 1,000 people in Las Vegas, 20,000 in Tucson, 34,000 in Denver. At some of the events, billed as stops on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, there were other speakers, including Democratic Nevada congressman Steven Horsford and Democratic Texas congressman Greg Casar. But Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were the brand names and the stars of the show—with the most at stake, in very different ways.
For Sanders, this tour has been about his lifelong causes and about vindication. He shook up the 2016 presidential race with a populist economic message and a grassroots organization, putting a scare into Hillary Clinton, the Democratic establishment’s choice for the nomination. Sanders also tapped into the anger toward government that helped propel Trump into the White House, though he was coming at it from the left instead of the right. And now Sanders, with little evident joy in being proven correct, has been reminding everyone that he was correct. “A few years ago, when I used the word oligarchy, people didn’t know what I was talking about,” Sanders told the raucous Denver crowd. “Well, they know what I’m talking about now!”
Mark Longabaugh, a political strategist, was one of the architects of Sanders’s surprisingly successful 2016 bid, and he thinks he knows why his old boss has hit the road again in a big way. “No, it isn’t about some endgame for him personally,” Longabaugh says. “He has a burning passion about economic injustice. He sees Trump and a bunch of punk billionaires come in and run roughshod over Social Security and Veterans Affairs, and he can’t stand by.” In addition to holding the rallies, Sanders’s team has begun hiring full-time organizers for follow-up work on local races and issues.
Sanders knows that Ocasio-Cortez is a useful tool in generating attention and promoting his progressive agenda. Yet it sure looks like the 83-year-old Sanders has also been using the rallies to tee up the 35-year-old New York congresswoman as his successor. D’Alessandro, who talks often with Sanders, dismisses that interpretation. “He doesn’t believe in pointing to someone and saying, ‘This is the person,’” D’Alessandro says. “He believes if the movement is out there, someone will earn it. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has the ability to do that, but ultimately, it’s going to be up to her.”
Indeed, the rallies have come at a fraught moment for the congresswoman. Ocasio-Cortez is clearly on board with the movement’s policy goals, but she’s considerably less certain about her best political role in advancing them. Two weeks ago Ocasio-Cortez was vehement in denouncing Chuck Schumer’s decision to surrender on the Republican federal budget bill, calling his choice “a huge slap in the face.” But a 2028 primary fight against New York’s senior senator seems unlikely, in part because Ocasio-Cortez might be a tough sell with more conservative upstate voters.
