One of the more revealing details about Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s current speaking tour, styled “Fighting Oligarchy” is not the crowd sizes (though they are impressive), nor the talking points (predictably about billionaires, the working class, the urgent need to do something). It’s the tone. They’re not trying to convince Trump supporters, or even the disengaged. They are trying to make Democrats feel good about themselves again.
At a moment when the Democratic Party has been routed, Trump back in office, Republicans dominant in the House and Senate, and the liberal centre in retreat, the Sanders-AOC roadshow offers catharsis, not strategy. Its purpose is to paper over the party’s contradictions, to reawaken the hope of 2016 without confronting the reasons it died in 2024. Like so many things in America now, it is less a political intervention than a kind of group therapy.
“The Sanders-AOC roadshow offers catharsis, not strategy.”
The crowds—tens of thousands in Denver, a full arena in Greeley, thousands more in Las Vegas and Tempe come not just to hear anti-capitalist rhetoric, but to remember what it felt like to believe in it. AOC says they need “brawlers” to defeat the right. Bernie declares oligarchy incompatible with democracy. The applause is real. So is the underlying sense of unreality: that none of this is going anywhere.
“The applause is real. So is the underlying sense of unreality: that none of this is going anywhere.”
It is easy, in fact, to mistake the tour for a campaign. But neither of them is running. Biden isn’t either. After limping through the early months of 2024, he stepped aside under pressure, clearing the way for Kamala Harris, who promptly lost to Trump. And yet, bizarrely, the Bidens are back. Not in power, but in orbit. They have offered to assist with Democratic fundraising and event appearances. Jill Biden, reportedly bruised by Nancy Pelosi’s role in nudging Joe toward the exit, now insists her husband remains an “asset” to the party. Some aides have compared the idea of putting Biden out front again to a sketch from Saturday Night Live.
This is the wider backdrop to the Sanders-AOC tour: not just defeat, but decay. The party leadership has no real direction, the figureheads of its last great experiment with progressive energy are now being wheeled out for donor dinners, and the base—what remains of it—comes together only to hear the same sermons in new cities. The spectacle is comforting. The trajectory is unchanged.
“The spectacle is comforting. The trajectory is unchanged.”
AOC, once the socialist face of a left insurgency, now speaks less of socialism than of unity. She wants to “broaden the base,” she says, reach beyond the squabbles of the online left. The implication is that the left is now something to be managed, not mobilised. The tour insists we are stronger together. But the only real togetherness on offer is that of the defeated.
The most honest thing about the whole affair is its name. This is a tour against oligarchy. Not an election campaign, not a strategy to win power, not even—despite the crowds—a mass movement. Just a tour. Something to do while the walls close in.
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