ANDREW BARKAN: Hi. This is Andrew Barkan in Oakland, California, where I just watched my sister, Phoebe, win the silver medal in the Para Climbing National Championships.
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Wow.
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DAVIS: 2:07 p.m. on Monday, March 24.
BARKAN: Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but my sister will be training to join the Paralympics in three years. Here's the show.
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DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: That's a great achievement.
DAVIS: Hey, there, it's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics.
MONTANARO: And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And today on the show, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have hit the road. The duo is holding campaign-like rallies across the country with this message for Republicans and President Trump.
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BERNIE SANDERS: We're not going to allow you and your friend, Mr. Musk, and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on the working families of this country.
DAVIS: I think by now, he needs no introduction, but he was, of course, referring to Elon Musk. Stephen, you recently attended one of these rallies in Arizona. What was it like?
FOWLER: It was different from what you would expect from a Bernie Sanders rally but also the same in many ways. I mean, there was a lot of energy. There were a lot of people very fired up to be there, but it was also a lot of people that are not lifelong Bernie fans. The campaign said over the weekend that an event they had in Denver had more than 34,000 people, which is larger than any rally that he did during his two presidential runs. The event that I was at was a pretty full arena inside and outside on Arizona State's campus. And the two takeaways from people that I talked to were that there was this sort of anger at what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing these first few months in office and also anger with Democrats for not really fighting and doing enough to push back against that agenda.
DAVIS: I'm curious about the people you talk to because I think one of the questions we all have as we're seeing these crowds at these rallies is, is it mostly Democrats, or is it voters of all stripes? Are there independents there? Are people just frustrated with the administration?
FOWLER: One of the people that I did talk to is a volunteer at the rally. Her name was Clarissa Vela, and she said that, you know, Democrats need to do more. They need to get loud with their opposition, and, you know, this Bernie Sanders rally was the perfect example of letting people know they were there. But others that I talked to were people that were kind of Bernie-curious, but more looking for just somebody to have their voice.
DAVIS: Domenico, it is pretty fascinating to me the role, the prominent role that Bernie Sanders continues to play. And I think it's worth noting that what he's doing here, it's sort of self-appointed, right? Like, he's not doing this on behalf of the DNC. He wasn't, like, asked by Senate Democrats to go out and do this. He's taking it sort of upon himself to hold these rallies across the country. I guess it's absurd how you see his role in the party right now with the caveat that he's actually not technically a Democrat.
MONTANARO: Yeah. I love that he's an independent/Democrat because it's sort of his little minor protest against the, you know, the sort of mod Dems, you might call them of the Democratic Party, to say that they need to stand for something else. And what we're talking about is a left-wing populism that has really grown within the Democratic base. You know, Bernie Sanders is 83 years old. He's probably not going to be president. So who's this going to be, right? I mean, his message certainly is emblematic of the anger that a lot of people are feeling toward the Trump administration on the left, and they want someone to, you know, voice that frustration and feel like they're a leader who has a vision for a way forward. Bernie Sanders certainly has that, but who is going to be the person who maintains that voice, who takes it to the, you know, next level to the next generation, so to speak?
DAVIS: Yeah. It's interesting to me with Bernie Sanders, too, because forever - I mean, he's always been very consistent in his messaging. But he was the voice of economic populism in the Democratic Party. And Donald Trump and the Republican Party have sort of laid claim to that mantle, right? Like, Bernie Sanders, you don't as much associate with a lot of the socially progressive causes of the left. He was really always anchored in a more economic argument...
MONTANARO: Yeah.
DAVIS: ...About the middle class and the working class.
MONTANARO: Absolutely. I mean, he's an economic warrior. You know, I mean, how many people can hear Bernie Sanders saying billionaires in their heads, right? I mean, it's just what his message has always been. It's been the exact same for 50 years, really. And a lot of people saw him as fringe, you know, some 15 years ago or so. And now his message is really mainstream. And we really have this war of populists in the United States in politics here now. We have this right-wing sort of extremist version in the White House currently, and you have this left-wing populism that's always been there beneath the surface, yet Democrats haven't quite been able to channel that to be able to win the White House. Certainly not in the age of Trump.
DAVIS: Stephen, I'd love to also get a sense of what the reception was like for Ocasio-Cortez on the opposite end of that spectrum. She's only 35. She's seen as sort of potentially this rising leader in the party. What was her message?
FOWLER: She's somebody who has emerged as this sort of progressive standard bearer, but from a more pragmatic standpoint, where she's willing to work in a way that is not just for messaging and not just more attention-grabbing principles. And so it's this sort of interesting evolution where you have Bernie Sanders, who has been saying the same thing for half a century, and then you have Ocasio-Cortez coming in and kind of picking up that mantle but transforming it in a way that I think will be a lot more relevant in the next two years and four years and kind of this shift in politics we're seeing.
MONTANARO: I also think it's really interesting, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for as much as the right wants to stereotype her as one thing or another or being too extremist, too far left, she has done a really kind of impressive job in understanding leadership and understanding politics and trying to understand the inside game, which is actually something that Bernie Sanders has never actually wanted to partake in. So she's trying to use that message on the outside that's similar to Bernie Sanders while also, you know, kind of understanding the inside game and, of course, being a little bit more online than the 83-year-old Bernie Sanders. And if we're in a time when the "extremes," quote-unquote, are what matters, maybe the energy of the left or right. Maybe this, you know, idea that moderating is what wins is something that has passed us by a little bit in this era.
DAVIS: All right. Let's take a quick break. More in a moment.
And we're back. And, Domenico, I'm curious to get your take on this because I have seen some people liken what is happening at these rallies and the people showing up to the Tea Party movement in 2010, where there was sort of an uprising in the electorate, and people started showing up to these town hall meetings all over the country, and there was a real organic sense of anger going through the country. Do you see that happening on the left, or is it too soon to know?
MONTANARO: Yeah. And that real organic anger was really on the right. You know, I wouldn't say it was throughout the country as a groundswell against Democrats, but there was certainly a groundswell among conservatives to unify on a message. It sort of evolved from this economic message into really what was a cultural movement that really led to Trump being president. And, you know, this could be the start of something like that if you have enough people with the message that seems to resonate with enough people. And I think right now that's where Democrats are struggling is what is that message? What is the vision going forward, and who are going to be the leaders that show up and that really get people inspired to come out and turn out? You know, the Democratic base right now is really looking for people to channel their frustration.
DAVIS: And, Stephen, it does seem like part of the message that is coming from people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez - and I'd even put former vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz in this bucket - is a lot of their message is about internal criticism of the Democratic Party, that the Democratic Party broke down and they're part of the problem.
FOWLER: Yeah. I mean, after an election where there was sort of shellacking at the Senate and the White House and the House, you know, there's a lot of introspection. There's a lot of finger-pointing. You know, I've been covering the changes within the Democratic Party and in the race for the Democratic National Committee chair. There was a little bit of circumspection around pointing the finger at former President Biden. But now there is this mobilizing factor of it seems there is a clear opponent in Elon Musk and the DOGE effort to restructure the government.
DAVIS: Yeah.
FOWLER: I think it's less sort of, like, calling out the party in public and more being like, look, this is the eye on the prize. This is the target. Let's all get on the same page to do it. I mean, I interviewed Bernie Sanders after his rally, and I asked him, you know, why now is your message about oligarchy seeming to have a little bit of a different reaction? And he said, yeah, I think for some people, it was an abstraction. But he said, looking at the three richest people in this country standing behind Donald Trump at his inauguration, talking about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, he said, people get it a lot more. And so now I think what you're seeing with the Democratic Party is just pushing people towards kind of the same page and the same goal of, like, look, it's not just an idea. Here's the reality of what we're facing.
DAVIS: Bernie Sanders also made a bit of an eye-popping comment recently in which he suggested that people maybe not run as Democrats, that maybe they should run as independent candidates like himself, which I'm not sure leaders of the Democratic Party would love to hear him saying that.
MONTANARO: (Laughter) Nope. Because this country is about alliances, and, you know, for better or worse, it's built on a two-party system. And really, we haven't seen third-party candidates really be able to gain steam nationally, and that's where the real issue comes in, especially if you're going to have one side that's, you know, 38- to 45% totally unified and you're split among yourselves on the other majority, then that's a recipe for losing.
DAVIS: Look, if Democrats lost in 2024, in part because the country thought that their views were too far left on certain issues, certainly social issues. But when these kind of things happen, if you're going to see primary challenges, for instance, in the Democratic Party, that generally comes from the left. I mean, it could have the effect of moving the party even further to the left, to your point, Domenico, that the old conventional wisdom that you win at the middle might just not be true anymore.
MONTANARO: Yeah. I'm not sure if this movement to moderation is really going to be something that Democrats are able to do, especially when you've got this kind of anger. And I have to say anger is a good thing in politics because it's a big motivator to make people vote, and it's certainly important to have this kind of activism and strength and unity among the base in a midterm election because that's how you really win elections is to have that kind of motivation and energy because fewer people vote in midterm elections than in presidential elections. They're going to have to figure it out in the 2028 presidential election what's going to happen.
But what we've really seen among the Democratic Party is a real shift in attitude. And I think that an NBC poll that came out earlier this month really kind of summarizes what that shift has been. Democrats have always been more likely to want compromise than Republicans were. April of 2017, 59% of Democrats said they want Democrats to make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation. March of 2025, 65% said stick to their positions, even if it means not getting things done in Washington. That is a 55-point net shift. So what they want right now is they want a fight.
DAVIS: All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
FOWLER: I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics.
MONTANARO: And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
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