Nearly a decade after his first presidential run, Bernie Sanders is stepping back into his favorite role: billionaire basher.
In Iowa, the state that helped propel him to national attention, the Vermont senator recently scolded elites for fueling inequality and economic unrest. And while other Democrats have joined his message, none have the popularity that Sanders still wields at 83.
Sanders’s grip on the party signifies a unique moment in Democratic politics as many approach the second Trump administration with concern about their own standing. Despite a growing desire for new leaders, few progressives pack the same punch.
“More people [are] speaking up and it’s because they see Bernie doing it,” said Paco Fabian, the director of campaigns for Our Revolution, the group that formed out of Sanders’s 2016 bid. “The difference now is reality caught up to what he’s been warning us about.”
The Democratic socialist has indeed been shouting his concerns about wealth concentration for decades. He’s an equal critic of both parties’ use of corporate money to move their agendas, picking up enemies on both sides.
But as he calls out President Trump and Elon Musk, the president’s most influential lieutenant, he’s also guiding the future direction of the Democratic Party toward economic populism with some traction, an unthinkable feat way back when.
“He is spot on,” said Richard Ojeda, a former West Virginia state senator who ran a brief populist presidential campaign, warning about the effects of billionaires on the working class.
“You can only continue taking from these people until they realize that the filthy rich need us a hell of a lot more than we need them,” Ojeda said.
Once considered a menace to Democrats, Sanders is now getting second looks from unexpected places, including some in establishment circles who worked to stifle his previous bids.
Within the Democratic National Committee, some members are speaking privately about considering parts of his anti-corporate platform, debating the merits of the small dollar model. Newly elected DNC Chairman Ken Martin, the former head of the Minnesota state party, is well liked by progressives and considered to have some of Sanders’s attributes.
“I have had a crazy number of previously totally anti-Bernie donor types tell me that he was right all along,” said Cooper Teboe, a progressive strategist who works closely with Sanders’s allies. “And that a Bernie 2016 would have prevented a Trump ’16 and ’24.”
That thinking was almost impossible to imagine just a few years ago, when Sanders was seen as more of a threat to Clinton — and most recently former President Biden — than to Trump.
But his consistency in articulating the same message over and over, his closest allies note, is one of his biggest draws. While Republicans and Democrats both posture towards what’s popular, Sanders has often stood alone in the working class arena, sidestepping pressure to conform to a centrist model that favors a college educated electorate and upper middle class.
In the 2020 primary, where he was the runner up to then-candidate Biden, Sanders expanded his coalition by gaining more younger Black and Latino voters, as well as more women. Parts of those groups have since migrated to the GOP, and Democrats are desperately seeking to reclaim those who feel abandoned.
“My read has been that he’s cementing his legacy and this is kind of a ‘I told you my vision was right’ tour,” said Teboe about his recent “Fighting the Oligarchy” rally in the Hawkeye State.
Swipes at the “corporate” media notwithstanding, Sanders is still frequently invited on CNN and Fox News. When he went on the Trump-friendly channel several years ago, he was criticized by Democrats who worried what liberals who despise the network would think. Now, rising stars from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to former Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg engage regularly with the outlet.
“It goes back to his authenticity,” Fabian said. “Bernie is Bernie. You know what you’re getting.”
One of Sanders’s staunchest supporters in Congress, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), sees him as a credible voice as Trump and Musk move to shake up the government in unprecedented ways.
As Sanders’s former campaign co-chair, Khanna has also offered an economic populist pitch in states like Iowa, where he believes Democrats can compete against Republicans with a different approach.
“There’s a lot of talk about how our party needs to reach people. Bernie Sanders is actually doing it,” Khanna told The Hill on Thursday.
“While Republicans are getting booed by their constituents at town halls, Sanders is being cheered on by massive crowds in red states where people are being devastated by funding cuts,” he said. “He’s giving people hope and inspiring them to stand up to the economic royalists.”
What was once out of fashion has come back around, and the handful of progressives consider Iowa — and other rural, working class states like it — to be back in the conversation. Democrats tossed the first-in-the-nation caucus in favor of South Carolina and are expected to realign their calendar once again before 2028.
“I can tell you from a very personal experience, they did not conduct those primaries as well as they should have,” Sanders told the Des Moines Register. “And I think that left a bad taste.”
Back home in Washington, the independent Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats, has managed to escape much of the blame around some of the litmus tests where other progressives have been criticized. On the issue of Gaza, for example, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, the Jewish senator has advocated for a ceasefire and Palestinian freedoms but has not caught the same backlash of others on the left who are seen as more overtly critical of Israel.
“Bernie has been pretty masterful in not falling into some of those traps,” Fabian said. “Nobody doubts that when he’s speaking out against what’s going on in Gaza … that he really believes that. That’s what it comes down to.”
“He’s not giving anybody a reason to change that opinion,” he added.
