The front of Thursday’s New York Times by San Francisco-based reporter Kellen Browning, “Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Electrify Democrats — Tens of Thousands at Anti-Trump Rallies.” Browning barely disguised his enthusiasm to push an old lefty and a younger lefty into the national spotlight. “Monster crowds” were touted:
The biggest political rallies anywhere in America right now are being headlined by an 83-year-old senator in the twilight of his career and his 35-year-old protégée.
Roughly 36,000 people in Los Angeles. More than 34,000 attendees in Denver. And another 30,000 on Tuesday night near Sacramento.
Those monster crowds — more than 200,000 people in all, according to organizers — have turned out to cheer on a fiery anti-Trump, anti-billionaire message from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York during their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of Western states….
(The Times never referred to any of Trump’s huge gatherings as “monster crowds.”)
With Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez making such an obvious play to the left, the paper seemed obligated to throw in a few “left” labels, but of the celebratory type, not the typical warning labels (“ultraconservative”!) the Times hangs on the right.
As Democrats search for a spark after being routed in November, the two progressives are providing the kindling, offering the party’s beaten-down base the fighting spirit it has been missing ever since President Trump returned to office.
Even as some top Democrats tack to the center or try to find common ground with the emboldened Republican president, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez dismiss the notion of any concessions. Instead, they have stuck to the simple argument that won over millions during Mr. Sanders’s two runs for president and endeared him to the types of working-class voters who abandoned Democrats in November: The system is broken, with the wealthy enriching themselves while others scrape by.
(The following strong accusation against Elon Musk — that he is purposely trying to benefit himself — is backed up by a February Times story which blew a lot of smoke but brought no fire: “The Times also found no evidence that Mr. Musk directly ordered that an investigation into one of his companies be shut down or stalled.”)
Fine-tuning that old message for an era in which the world’s richest person is wielding a powerful position in the federal government to benefit his businesses, Mr. Sanders is finding that Democrats are all ears.
Browning shared the glee of the Sanders narrative.
The day before their Folsom rally, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez drew 12,500 people at a stop in Nampa, Idaho, according to a Sanders spokeswoman, who said it was the largest political event in the deep-red state since Barack Obama visited in 2008. His staff said the crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles last week was the biggest of Mr. Sanders’s career.
The enormous turnout has surprised even Mr. Sanders’s staff members, who have had to switch to larger venues to accommodate the crowds. In Folsom, attendees waited in a line three miles long to get in, the Sanders spokeswoman said, with thousands peering through fences and watching from nearby hills.
The sparse ideological labeling came off as cautionary but not hostile.
Whether voters will ultimately trust proudly left-wing leaders to run the country is an open question.
The Times has apparently gotten over its previous selective fever for campaign finance reform and removing (Republican) money from politics, bragging about Democrats taking in big sums.
Other signs point to a growing appetite for the kind of message Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are offering. Both raised staggering sums of money in the first three months of the year, according to new financial filings: Mr. Sanders raised $11.5 million, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez brought in $9.6 million.
Also on Thursday, the Washington Free Beacon reported “Campaign expenditures released Tuesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show Sanders’s main campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders, spent $221,723 chartering private jets during the first quarter of 2025.” That doesn’t exactly match the Green New Deal line.
