WARREN, Mich. – Bernie Sanders is standing alone on the back of a pickup truck shouting into a bullhorn.
He's facing several hundred ecstatic voters huddled outside a suburban Detroit high school — the group that did not fit inside the high school's gym or two overflow rooms. The crowd screams in delight when he tells them that a combined total of 9,000 people had shown up for the rally.
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“What all of this tells me, is not just in Michigan or in Vermont, the people of this country will not allow us to move toward oligarchy. They will not allow Trump to take us into authoritarianism,” Sanders yelled. “We’re prepared to fight. And we’re going to win.”
At 83 years old, Sanders is not running for president again. But the stooped and silver-haired democratic socialist has emerged as a leader of the resistance to Donald Trump's second presidency. In tearing into Trump's seizure of power and warning about the consequences of firing tens of thousands of government workers, Sanders is bucking the wishes of those who want Democrats to focus on the price of eggs or “roll over and play dead.”
For now, at least, Sanders stands alone as the only elected progressive willing to mount a national campaign to harness the fear and anger of the sprawling anti-Trump movement.
He drew a crowd of 4,000 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Friday night. He faced another 2,600 or so the next morning a few hours away in Altoona, Wisconsin, a town of less than 10,000 residents. And his crowd of 9,000 in suburban Detroit exceeded his own team's expectations. By design, each stop was in a swing U.S. House district represented by a Republican.
Sanders, who was just elected to his fourth Senate term from Vermont, conceded that this is not the role he expected to play at this stage of his career.
In fact, his team intentionally waited in the early weeks of the Trump presidency to launch what they are now calling his “stop oligarchy tour” to see if a high-profile Democrat would fill the leadership void. Instead, Sanders — who is not a Democrat himself despite allying with Senate Democrats and running twice for the party's presidential nomination — has people wondering if he's considering another White House bid.
“This is like presidential campaign rallies, isn’t it? But I’m not running for president, and this is not a campaign,” Sanders told The Associated Press. “You gotta do what you gotta do. The country’s in trouble and I want to play my role.”
The divided Democratic resistance
Since losing the White House, Democrats across Washington have struggled to coalesce behind a consistent message or messenger to stop Trump's aggressive moves to slash the government workforce, weaken federal oversight and empower tech titan Elon Musk to execute his vision.
There has been no centralized movement to organize the anti-Trump resistance.
“You look around — who else is doing it? No one,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said of Sanders' efforts. “My hope is that the dam will break in terms of Democrats going on the offense ... We need to take the argument directly to the people.”
Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Sanders ally, said she would join him on the road in the coming weeks. She's also planning solo appearances in Republican-held congressional districts in Pennsylvania and New York — and perhaps others in places where Republicans have declined to hold in-person town halls where they might face protests.
“It’s not about whether Bernie should or shouldn’t be doing this. It’s about that we all should,” she said. “But he is unique in this country, and so long as we are blessed to have that capacity on our side, I think we should be thankful for it.”
Beyond Sanders' tour, angry voters have so far relied on grassroots groups like Indivisible to organize a series of local protests. They have been effective in pressuring Trump's allies in some cases. A number of House Republicans facing angry questions have criticized Musk or questioned the cuts being carried out at his allies' behest.
Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, who has been critical of many Democratic leaders, praised Sanders for stepping up.
“I wish more Democrats were traveling the country, including to red states, to rally the the majority against Musk and Project 2025,” Levin said. “Sure as hell beats (House Democratic leader Hakeem) Jeffries traveling the country for his children’s book tour during a constitutional crisis.”
During last month's congressional recess, Jeffries made two appearances to promote a children's book about democracy. He has also traveled to support House Democrats. This past weekend, he was in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
The truth is that few, if any, Democratic leaders have the capacity to draw such crowds on short notice or organize the related logistics on a national scale. The party’s nascent class of 2028 presidential prospects, a group that includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, have limited national profiles and they have been reluctant to step too far into the national spotlight so far.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, among the more outspoken Trump critics in Congress, said that Democrats must be better organized.
“People are desperate to be plugged into action right now. People see the threat. They are anxious and angry and motivated and they want to be sent in a direction to help,” he said.
Murphy acknowledged that Sanders still has plenty of detractors within the Democratic Party who view him and his progressive policy ideas — replacing private and job-based health insurance with a government-funded “Medicare for All” plan, free public college, and the “Green New Deal” on climate policy — as too radical.
Indeed, it was just five years ago when Democrats coalesced around Joe Biden to effectively block Sanders from winning the party's 2020 presidential nomination.
“There still are a lot of folks who view Bernie as a danger to the party," Murphy said, "whereas I see his message as the core of what we need to build on.”
Sanders was a staunch supporter of Biden over the last four years but criticized the Democratic Party in the aftermath of Kamala Harris' loss last fall, declaring that Trump's victory was possible only because Democrats had “abandoned” the working class.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who introduced Sanders in Michigan, said more Democrats need to "follow his lead to focus on working-class people and working-class issues."
“They’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror, in my opinion, and decide who the hell they want to represent," Fain said of Democrats. “We’ve been clear as a union, if they aren’t looking out for working-class people, we’re not going to be there for them.”
The voters speak
The voters who packed venues across Wisconsin and Michigan over the weekend composed a diverse group, including some who did not support Sanders’ past presidential campaigns. Most said that Democratic leaders have not done enough to stop Trump.
“I’m here because I’m afraid for our country. The last six weeks have been horrible,” said Diana Schack, a 72-year-old retired lawyer who attended her first Sanders rally on Saturday. “I am becoming a more avid Bernie fan, especially in light of the work he’s doing traveling around the country. These are not normal times.”
In Kenosha the night before, Amber Schulz, a 50-year-old medical worker, demanded that her party “step up and do something.”
“Bernie is the only politician I trust,” she said.
Tony Gonzales, 56, an independent from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, said he's worried that Trump will “dismantle historic American standards” and try to stay in office beyond this term. The Constitution bars presidents from serving more than two terms, even as Trump has suggested he deserves a third.
“It's a dangerous time right now,” Gonzales said. “What Bernie has to say — and the turnout — is important. His voice is still being heard.”
Sanders delivered the same fiery populist message over the weekend that he has for decades, seizing on the nation's economic inequality to call for free health care, free public higher education and stronger social safety net programs. Sanders was especially focused on the team of billionaires Trump has appointed to serve as leaders in his administration, including Musk and a half dozen others.
“They want to dismantle the federal government and cut programs that working people desperately need," Sanders warned.
“Yes, the oligarchs are enormously powerful. They have endless amounts of money. They control our economy. They own much of the media, and they have enormous influence over our political system,” he continued. “But from the bottom of my heart, I believe that if we stand together, we can beat them.”
It’s unclear how long that Sanders, an octogenarian who was hospitalized for a heart condition during his 2020 campaign, will continue in this role. A spokesperson said Sanders hasn't had any health issues since the 2019 episode.
He is not expected to slow down anytime soon. Sanders is leaning on his 2020 presidential campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, to organize his stops, backed by a handful of former presidential campaign staffers working on a contract basis.
Shakir, who lost his bid to become the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged strategic differences within the party about how best to combat Trump.
Last month, veteran political strategist James Carville penned an opinion piece calling for Democrats to “roll over and play dead,” betting that Trump and his party would ultimately suffer a political backlash from voters for going too far.
“One theory is you can play dead; you can strategically retreat,” Shakir said. “Or, you play alive, and you go out to people and you talk to them with conviction and integrity.”