Bernie Sanders aims for Trump and draws record crowds: NPR

TEMPE, Ariz. — Sen. Bernie Sanders has emerged as a major voice for voters opposed Trump’s rapid push to dismantle the federal government, and is unhappy with Democrats’ response.

While Sanders and his fiery form of economic populism attacking the growing influence of billionaires and corporates in politics, it’s nothing new, interest in both the message and messenger has been updated by Trump’s second term and the massive role Elon Musk played in reducing federal spending and pushing agencies to fire workers.

“Well, when I talked about Olihead over the years, I think it was an abstraction for some people,” Sanders said in an interview with NPR. But “people understand that what we have today requires you to be blind for billionaires governments, billionaires and billionaires.”

But an independent Vermont senator said at the same time that Democrats proposed capitalizing the moment by turning their backs on the working class in America and defending policies that address things like income inequality, healthcare, and climate change.

“If they do that, I think working people will come back to the crease,” he predicted. “If not, I think the party will continue to decline.”

On Thursday, Sanders began his Western swing on his “Fighting Olgarkie” tour with rally in Las Vegas, Arizona and Tempe. The pair, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, spoke to a crowd of thousands inside and outside Arizona State University’s Mallet Arena about the threat Trump and his allies pose to American voters and government.

“We will not allow you to move this country to Olihead,” Sanders pledged, telling Trump directly. “We are not going to allow you, your friend Musk and other billionaires to wreak havoc on working families in this country. No, you are not going to destroy Social Security. You are not going to destroy Medicaid. You are not going to destroy the veterans administration.”

On Friday, Sanders’ communications director said more than 30,000 people had appeared in Denver, Colorado.

In the first months of Trump’s return to the White House, Musk’s efforts at his Department of Government Efficiency have seen confusion and confusion from the widespread termination that attempted to eliminate wholesale of government contracts, federal workers, and agencies and departments.

Democrats don’t have Congress or the White House, but Ocasio-Cortez said they have powers against Trump administration policies that say voters hide the true gap between “their infinite greed that costs the lives of very, very, very top people and everyone else.”

“Ironically, the most divisive forces in the country are actually beginning to bring us more together,” she said. “And that’s important because the same billionaires who take wrecking balls in our country will draw their strength from dividing working people.”

Democrats aren’t popular either

A recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that the majority of voters feel about the state of the country and that Trump’s agenda has been rushing without considering its impact, but that complaint has also spread to Democrats.

Last week’s NBC News survey found that the party’s popularity, driven by disgruntled Democrats hoping to actively counter Trump’s agenda rather than attempting to compromise, is at its lowest ever popular.

The sentiment was on display at the Sanders rally in Arizona. There, volunteer Clarissa Vera said Democrats need to tell voters what they’re going to do about the unpopular changes Trump pushed, in order for them to “stop biting their tongues and make a loud noise.”

“They need to organize themselves because that’s the only way this works,” she said. “They need to show their faces wherever they go, and they’re very exhausted. But at the end of the day, if you want to regain democracy, that’s what we have to do. We didn’t win the war on your couch.

After a critical loss in November, Democrats elected a new party leader to direct national infrastructure, but no one was singular incentive to promote response to the early days of Trump’s return to the White House, let alone a unified message.

Democrat voters and some lawmakers are unhappy with the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to help Republicans avoid government shutdowns after House Democrats opposed their support for spending plans.

What’s coming next?

Repeated questions emerged as a large crowd joined Sanders’ events and more people began to seek shaking within the Democratic strategy. Why don’t many Democrats sound like Bernie Sanders?

For one, Sanders is not a Democrat, but he is conspired with them. Sanders has been in Congress for 30 years and is undoubtedly Washington’s most famous progressive. Vermont’s politics and demographics are also more gentle on Sanders’ views than other battlefield districts of the Trump era.

Other elected Democrats may not be using the same rhetoric as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to raise alarms, but we have seen rising backlashes in Mask and Doge, particularly as they begin to adopt similar framing to go after Republicans.

Earlier this week, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz is one of many places where Democrats hold City Hall in districts expressed in GOP at an event in Ode Claire, Wisconsin, and has expressed his anger at Musk-inspired cuts to the federal government.

The Waltz targeted Trump and Musk and begged Wisconsin voters to appear in the main state Supreme Court elections on April 1.

“We’ll have to have a conversation about Democrats being very honest and that the American health care system is still incredibly broken in ways that don’t serve people,” Waltz said. “That’s incredibly frustrating.”

Sanders is not surprised that his long-standing message appears to resonate with people across the ideological spectrum:

“If you’re a working-class Republican, I don’t think it makes much sense to give the richest people in the country a $1 trillion tax credit, then cut (the Bureau of Veterans Affairs), chase Social Security and cut $800 billion in Medicaid,” he said. “Republicans, independence, Democrats… very few people think that makes absolutely sense.”