Bernie Sanders fired back at criticism for using the word “oligarchy” as he defended his approach to rallying voters and the Democratic base to respond to the DOGE-ification of the federal government.
His remarks on Sunday came after Michigan’s newly elected Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin told Politico that she thinks her party should stop using the term.
“The American people are not as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are,” an unusually pointed Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“I think they understand very well, when the top 1 per cent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy.”
Slotkin, who spoke with Politico last week, urged her fellow party members to stop using the term “oligarch” — a word she herself has used to describe Russian billionaire allies of Vladimir Putin on X.
The independent senator from Vermont told NBC’s Kristen Welker that the tens of thousands of Americans coming out to his rallies across the United States are proof that Slotkin is out of step with Americans across the country.
“We had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado. We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California,” Sanders said.
“These are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about. Are you living in a democracy when [Elon Musk] can spend $270 million to elect Trump and then becomes the most important person in government?” he added. “Or where AIPAC and other super PACs have enormous power over Democratic candidates?”
Joining Sanders on his appropriately-named “Fighting Oligarchy” tour is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the party’s youngest stars in Congress and a favorite to seek higher office in the coming cycles. The two have turned out crowds larger than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they rally angry Democrats and independents in response to the rapid, sweeping changes to the federal government under Trump’s second presidency.
Another Democrat taking the party’s message directly to voters at a time when the national Democratic brand is badly tarnished is Conor Lamb, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, who continues to make appearances at town hall-style events across his home state, including in Republican districts.
Lamb, who lost a Senate primary to incumbent Senator John Fetterman after progressives broke in Fetterman’s favor, mended fences with Ocasio-Cortez in a social media thread that also revealed where he fell on the use of the term “oligarch.”
He, like Ocasio-Cortez, is widely believed to have ambitions of further political service.
“[C]learly we have been on the same side of the oligarchy question (against) and protecting social security and Medicare (for),” Lamb wrote to Ocasio-Cortez on X last month. “[L]ets make that team as big as possible. Good luck on the road.”
Sanders, like many progressives, faulted Democrats for abandoning key parts of the party’s electoral base — working class voters and minorities — after the 2024 election ended disastrously for Harris, who lost every major battleground state to Trump and won millions fewer votes than her old running mate, Joe Biden, did four years prior.
During the campaign, Harris eschewed public support for policy items supported by many on the left, including raising the minimum wage or ending U.S. military support for the Israeli siege of Gaza, and instead campaigned with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and vowed that her presidency would be a continuation of Biden’s first term.
Sanders was an avid supporter of many provisions in Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, which died in Congress after the party suffered defections from two centrist Democrats who later gave up their seats rather than face reelection challenges.
