Bernie Sanders Now Urging Progressives to Run as Independents, Not Democrats
“There’s a lot of great leadership all over this country at the grass-roots level. We’ve got to bring that forward. And if we do that, we can defeat Trumpism and we can transform the political situation in America.”
As the Democratic party grapples with its current identity crisis, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), are rallying the faithful members of the left at a series of rallies at various locations.
This week, I am headed to Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado with @AOC, @GregCasar, and @StevenHorsford to hold town halls with working class Americans.
Together, we will stand strong in the struggle against authoritarianism and oligarchy.
I hope you'll join us. pic.twitter.com/PoeO0qIbm4
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 19, 2025
In what is a sign of the rift in the party, Sanders is talking up a new strategy which involves having progressive candidates run for office as independents, rather than Democrats.
What is Bernie up to here?
The New York Times reported:
Bernie Sanders Has an Idea for the Left: Don’t Run as Democrats
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a message for his fellow progressives: Why don’t you shed the Democratic label and run as an independent, the way he does?
Mr. Sanders’s admonition came in an interview with The New York Times on the eve of a three-day, five-city swing through Western states alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. He predicted that they would draw tens of thousands of people to rally against President Trump, Elon Musk and the influence of billionaires on the American government.
“One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of great leadership all over this country at the grass-roots level. We’ve got to bring that forward. And if we do that, we can defeat Trumpism and we can transform the political situation in America.”
The suggestion that would-be leaders of the left should abandon the Democratic Party picks at a political scab that has never fully healed. Mr. Sanders, 83, a longtime independent, has had a tense yet codependent relationship with the party for decades.
It is rather funny that Bernie has always claimed to be an independent, except when he is repeatedly running for president, in which case he seeks the support and nomination of the Democrats.
With regard to his new plan, conventional wisdom suggests that Bernie’s idea would divide the left.
Ed Morrissey explains it well at Hot Air:
This would go beyond just challenging establishment Democrat incumbents in primaries. If Sanders convinces progressives to run as independents, in most states they would have to do so in general elections. They would then run against Democrats and Republicans, likely splitting voters on the Left while allowing right-leaning voters to unite behind the GOP nominee. That would portend an absolute disaster for Democrats, essentially forcing a party split at a time when they’re already at the nadir of favorability as a consolidated party.
This is a call to outright civil war in the political-electoral sense. One has to wonder what Sanders envisions as the outcome of such a strategy.
The progressive wing of the Democratic party clearly sees this latest rift as an opportunity.
The Democratic Party needs a major transformation.
It can no longer be a top-down, billionaire-funded, consultant-driven party. It must be a multi-generational, multi-racial working class party.
In a time of growing oligarchy & authoritarianism, that’s the only path to victory.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 17, 2025
It’s still not clear how Bernie’s new strategy is supposed to work. Is running as an independent just supposed to mask the woke, far left policies these disciples of Bernie will undoubtedly embrace?
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Bernie, be honest, run as communists.
Good ole’ Bernie, a self-described socialist with a high-end income, multiple houses and a fondness for air travel shows that his lifestyle doesn’t match his rhetoric.
As the saying goes, socialism isn’t for the socialist.
To the contrary, the elites and communist countries usually lived very well. It was the common man and woman that generally got to be equally poor and miserable
they queered “liberal”
now they have queered “democrat”
hell, they even queered “queer”
‘
There ain’t no stopping them now.
As Shakespeare saids…what’s in a name? Sanders by any other name is still a disingenuous grifting communist…or “Democrat” for short.
I do appreciate ‘honest Democrats’
Bernie Sanders is not likely to live long enough to see any resurgence of left winners, independent or otherwise. Just wait for criminal prosecutions of Dems hit full stride, when the dust settles will there even be a Dem party or a Bernie Sanders?
Bernie should urge his wife to apply for president of a few more liberal colleges so they can go bankrupt.
Use the money to buy a few more lake houses.
Why don’t they form a Progressive Party and run under that party?
Make Dems Moderate Again.
That poster featuring Comrades Sanders and Occasional-Cortex is perfect. Two of the most manifestly lazy, useless, parasitic, entitled, hypocritical, narcissistic and too stupid to succeed in the private sector, apparatchiks of the vile Dhimmi-crat Party. Idiots who’ve never worked an honest day in their lives, but, instead, have found fame and wealth sitting in a government sinecure.
Bernie is going to Ross Perot the Democrats. Love it.
Exactly!
Exactly! But which will be the centrist wing of the party and which the radical?
The cliff won’t care as both go over it.
“to rally against President Trump, Elon Musk and the influence of billionaires on the American government.”
…he says with a deliciously oblivious lack of self-awareness.
Notice how he dropped his usual “millionaires and billionaires” line now that he’s grifted himself into millionaire status?
Progressives will taint every label they adopt, so it’s really irrelevant what endonym they order us to use.
They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. . . every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
If the Dem party’s gangrenous limb wants to self-amputate, good.
They’ll never do it. They need the moderate sheep for the same reason a sandwich needs veggies — for bulk fiber. Without them, they have no critical mass and they know it.
So split the leftie vote—I like it!
Crazy Ber ie could be a huge bust to the RNC. He dove think people out of the DNC to indep, now he was to drive them again. Only one place to go.
Usually, you don’t drive for that… you use trains.
bernie =a communistnazi loving freak who just happens to love his beach houses and money
btw…this will also lead to more states passing rcv
so that when that lefty vote is split
they will still win
My assumption is that Bernie has hopes that the Democrat party will be willing to shower vast sums of money on these ostensibly “independent” progressives to convince them to stay within the Dem fold.
That is, after all, his personal pattern, “Bribe me and I won’t run”.
Does he actually refer to them as the 2012, 2016, and 2020 houses to keep them straight?
Re your last sentence, no. Bernie wants his downtrodden people to rise up and give him his perfect communist dream.
For the good of all this useless grifter should just die already.
Democrats I understand. Well, the party has been subverted into a pack of Communists’…
But I understand them.
And they are just horrible.
But even worse…..
The Independents.
They don’t even have a clue!!!
So it’s Make Communism Great Again? Poster sure looks like something from the early or mid 20th century!
Haha do it in contested races and watch your loss. True Indy only wins if they are centrist and Bernie is a fake Indy that enjoys an uncontested niche until a Dem decides to run against him
Never mind making Canada the 51st state. Let’s just to an upfront trade of Vermont for Alberta.
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