36,000 attendees in Los Angeles. 34,000 in Denver. 20,000 in Tucson and Salt Lake City. An appearance at Coachella, even. The “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” is taking the nation by storm — and it threatens the current position of the Democratic Party.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tour the country, rallying people against Donald Trump and the oligarchy in Washington, D.C., a new movement is starting to take shape, one that could take control of the Democrats. If the key Democratic players don’t get their act together, they risk being left in the dust.
The Democratic Party is facing a period of turmoil after losing the 2024 election. After setting aside Joe Biden barely five months before Election Day and replacing him with his vice president, Kamala Harris, without holding primary elections, not everyone in the party was pleased.
Harris won six million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Trump’s 77 million votes in 2024 would not have beaten Biden’s 81 million in 2020 , which was the highest vote total in US history.
These six million voters are proof of the Democratic Party’s weakness to Trump’s populist methods since he first ran in 2016. The Democrats don’t have solutions for the problems America faces, only a method for keeping their power: being more moderate. This only worsens the problems that make people feel abandoned by their leaders, the same conditions that led to the rise of Trump.
But two leaders are trying to change this. Throughout the past two months, Sanders and AOC have been touring the nation, holding rallies that have attracted thousands of people in person and even more attention online. They are making a show of strength to the rest of the Democratic Party, mobilizing huge numbers of people against Trump.
Amid record-low approval ratings for the Democratic Party, their events have been bigger than any other recent Democratic events. Sanders’ advisers said that two-thirds of people at the events have never come to see him before. It’s a progressive revival that threatens to finally tear Democrats away from their association with “the establishment,” the constant buzzword that the MAGA movement has used to label the left as the enemy.
Many moderate Democrats are concerned this tour will veer the party too far left. However, the Democrats have been too moderate since the end of the New Deal era with FDR, a moment that not only revived the party but rescued the United States from utter ruin. The party needs to be progressive again, not just for their own sake, but for the sake of the American people. In the face of the threat of falling into fascism, the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” is making a play not just for influence in the party, but for the hearts of everyday Americans.
More than 100,000 people attended the rallies, including one at Coachella, and the tour shows no signs of slowing. Sanders finally has the conditions he needs to make progressivism the face of the Democrats: a clear external enemy in Trump, significant division in the Democratic Party between what Rep. Greg Casar has called the “fighters and folders,” and several Congressmembers, including AOC, Maxwell Frost, and Casar, ready to lead and take over the movement.
The only thing missing now is for party elites to move aside and push for a progressive, New Deal Democrat to win the nomination of the party and the election to the presidency. This doesn’t just require mobilizing the country to finally elect the first truly progressive leader in 80 years; it requires the removal of elites who have not allowed a true leftist into the halls of power for some time.
If Sanders and AOC’s “Fighting Oligarchy” movement does not succeed, the US could risk allowing its democracy to fall into ruin.
That is why we — everyday Americans — must support this movement. They are fighting for us, for our livelihoods and for our rights. Sanders and AOC need our voices to join the movement and push out Trump’s populism and the Democrats who are too cowardly to fight it.