Bernie Sanders Has an Idea for the Left: Don't Run as Democrats [View all]

Source: NY Times

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.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democrats-independents.html