Bernie Sanders is drawing massive crowds, not in the so-called “Commie Corridor” of Brooklyn and Queens, but in battleground states like Maine, Florida, and Michigan. This is unusual, as Atlantic writer Russell Berman noted earlier this week: “Democratic candidates typically embrace him during primaries and then stick him on the sidelines for the stretch run, when they’re rediscovering their love of capitalism and bipartisanship.” But this year, many of these candidates are still embracing him—and his policies—in the general election, despite competing in tight races against Republicans. By doing so, they’re testing a long-running question on the left: Can Democrats beat Republicans with a social-democratic platform centered on the working class? Tuesday’s elections will provide a clearer answer than any U.S. election has this century.
When Sanders ran for president in 2016 and 2020, many of his supporters insisted that had he won the Democratic primary, he would have gone on to win the general election. In this dreamy hypothetical scenario, we could have been spared Trump in 2016 (perhaps also averting Biden, the genocide in Gaza, and Trump 2.0). “Bernie would have won!” has been a wistful core belief of the Vermont senator’s supporters; some poll data indeed suggests he could have, but given all the oligarchic cash that would have been deployed to oppose him, the unpredictability of polling, and the conservativism of many Americans, who knows? We never will, of course. Sanders is (presumably!) too old to run for president again, so these midterms are the best test yet of whether his politics can beat Trumpism on the ballot.
The core of Sanders’s politics is an opposition to oligarchy and support for a better life for America’s working class. In policy terms, that has meant support for Medicare for All, lowering the price of prescription drugs, taxing the rich and large corporations, limiting corporate power, the right to organize unions, and free college. It has also meant universal childcare, the right to choose abortion, affordable housing, a higher minimum wage, fully funded K-12 public schools, and an end to most foreign wars. Some version of this agenda has exploded all over the country, with great success, electing mayors, congresspeople, city councilmembers, and state legislators, mostly in blue areas. But only now are its powers being seriously tested on red and purple terrain in races of national significance.
In Maine, Democratic voters, eager to run a Sanders-style Democrat against incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, nominated Graham Platner, a charismatic oysterman and former Marine who supported Medicare for All. When Platner dropped out over sexual assault allegations, he was replaced, in a complicated internal party process, by Troy Jackson, a former logger and labor leader. Jackson’s personality is far less colorful than Platner’s, but his politics are similar. The issue atop Jackson’s platform is Medicare for All; after that, lowering the price of prescription drugs and taxing billionaires and large corporations. The race is close, with Jackson leading slightly.
By now everyone has heard of Abdul El-Sayed, who first burst onto the Michigan political scene in 2018 to run for governor, a doctor fighting for Medicare for All who was one of the first candidates to be embraced by Sanders’s movement as a “Berniecrat.” He lost in 2018, but this time, running for Senate with a message of “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all,” he’s commanded far more momentum. This race is also very close.
Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida, is prioritizing Medicare for All too, followed by universal childcare, public education, housing, and unions. She’s polling several points behind Republican Ashley Moody. But even if Nixon loses, no one should write her off—nor underestimate the future of Sanders-style politics in her state: She leads with 68 percent among voters 18–25, and 59 percent among those age 25–34.
There’s an important caveat here: Each of those candidates has put some distance between themselves and the socialist movement. El-Sayed says he is not a socialist, Jackson hasn’t used that word, and Nixon is a member of Democratic Socialists of America but says she herself is not a democratic socialist. But they are running on the same issues Sanders ran on, and Sanders has appeared on the campaign trail with each of them.
There are many other races in purple and red areas around the country where Sanders’s influence can be felt. Smoke jumper and union leader Sam Forstag in Montana’s deep-red 1st congressional district is running against Republican Aaron Flint in a competitive open race, on a vow to “Make Montana Work for Working People,” with housing, health care, childcare and education at the top of his platform. Will Lawrence, in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, which went slightly for Trump in 2024, is polling ahead of incumbent Republican Tom Barrett. Lawrence is running on taxing the rich, affordable housing, and health care for all.
Then there’s Nevada, a state where Sanders won the 2020 Democratic presidential caucus in a landslide. Many of his followers have described that night as the last time they had any hope for a leftist turn in national politics. This year, working-class Latino voters may hand the Democrats a victory over an incumbent Republican governor and flip a House seat in a red district, thanks in part to Sanders’s playbook. In an interview with Politico, Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Mastro emphasized Nevada’s lessons for Democrats across the country: Focus on the cost of living. The gubernatorial Democratic challenger, Aaron Ford, is running on an “Affordable Nevada” platform with housing and health care as the top two issues. The first sentence of House candidate Teresa Bentiz Thompson’s platform is, “People across northern Nevada are working harder and getting less.”
Whether or not these candidates win will not decisively settle the question about whether Sanders-style politics can topple Trumpism in elections. There are too many other electoral factors in play, from the president’s corruption to ICE’s abuses. But the results, if they largely favor the aforementioned candidates, could point the Democratic Party in a new direction for 2028.
It’s high time. Sanders’s movement has now grown bigger and more electorally successful than anyone expected. The Democratic Socialists of America has grown to nearly 130,000 members, with many running for office as socialists, winning elections against moderate Democrats, and proving the popularity of policies like rent stabilization, universal childcare, free transit, and public control of energy. Yet many pundits and establishment Democrats treat the left vote as niche, one that can only succeed in blue cities and college towns.
The left believes that centrists’ failure to deliver material improvements to people’s lives yielded the toxic combination of resentment and apathy that gave us two terms of Trump—and that we can’t defeat the MAGA right, and build a better America, without remaking the Democratic Party in the mold of Bernie Sanders. Ten years ago, the mainstream portrayed us as naïve, hopeless dreamers who refused to accept political reality. But as more and more Americans struggle in a cruelly unequal economy, and increasingly blame the entrenched politicians in both parties, our dreams don’t look so hopeless anymore.
