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Compare and Contrast: AOC and Bernie Sanders' messaging on their Fighting Oligarchy Tour [1]

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Date: 2025-06-03

Many on this site have championed AOC and Bernie Sanders both for the tour they embarked on starting early in 2025 and for the crowds they attract. This tour is probably the most cited and most positively commented on response to the authoritarian Trump administration.

And there is much to be positive about. The tour has attracted big crowds, including 34,000 in Denver (prospect.org/...) and 35,000 in Los Angeles (www.theguardian.com/...). They have attracted solid crowds in some in notoriously red states in which the Democratic Party struggles to gain support. 20,000 people saw them when they spoke in Utah (www.fox13now.com/...).

To be honest, while I was aware of the tour and the large crowds it was attracting, I had paid little attention to it. I felt I’d heard what Bernie Sanders had to say and didn’t think what he was saying on the tour was any different. However, while in a conversation in the comments section about the efficacy of crowd sizes, I decided to see if I could find a transcript of any of the speeches to see what is being said and how effective they were really were in fighting against the Republican Party and Donald Trump.

I found a transcript of the speeches he and AOC gave in Greely, Colorado on March 21st at www.rev.com/…. All quotes that I’ve used in this diary are taken from this transcript.

One of the first questions I asked myself was if voter registration booths were set up in order to ensure voters are eligible to vote in elections in 2025 and 2026. One of the most important, and most basic, tasks that need to be undertaken in order to win elections is to make sure supporters are eligible to vote. I noted that a number of Hands Off rallies did have voter registration stations. But I cannot find any mention of voter registration booths at the Fighting Oligarchy events. It has certainly helped Bernie Sanders fundraising — he has raised 7 million dollars from the tour and fundraises off of it on his website (amsterdamnews.com/…, bsanders-astro.pages.dev/...). People are asked to register at his website, which will expand his e-mail lists.

I would love to see, if the tour continues, voter registration booths set up at every rally. If they have been, please correct me and I’ll edit this diary later.

There is one area in which I will criticize both AOC and Bernie Sanders. There is little discussion of racism in the speeches. Little discussion of misogyny. Little discussion of homophobia and transphobia. There is no specific discussion of Trump’s attacks on programs that support women, the Black Community, the Hispanic Community, the Indigenous Community, and the LGBTQ+ community. There is no discussion of his abuse of DEI to engage in blatantly racist policies, from policing to housing to education to immigration. There is no discussion of the racism that is at the core of the Republican Party and of many of their voters. The only mention of these issues by both AOC and Bernie Sanders is in the context of their assertion that Republicans and Oligarchs are using these fault lines to divide the American people. There is no recognition that these fault lines, particularly with regard to race, have defined the country for over 400 years.

I see this as a significant problem with both of their approaches. As has often been said, a “lifting all boats” policy isn’t much of a solution if Black communities remain underwater.

Both AOC and Bernie Sanders did a very good job criticizing and attacking the Trump administration during their speeches. They attacked his authoritarians, his draconian cuts to government services, and the blatant corruption we see every day.

In her speech, AOC did an exceptional job defining the far right Republican Party. She described it as “a politics that involves lying to and screwing over working and middle class Americans so that they can steal from our healthcare, Social Security, and veterans' benefits to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest and bailouts for their crypto billionaire friends. And Greeley, there's a word for this kind of thing, corruption.” www.rev.com/...

He's handed the keys to Elon Musk and is selling off our country for parts to the wealthiest people in the world for a kickback. And in exchange, those billionaires and oligarchs will back his campaigns and bankroll those of his allies. They scratch his back and he scratches theirs. And all of us are left behind. www.rev.com/...

I also loved how she fought against the Republican argument that policies supporting universal health care, food stamps, and other forms of support for the poor and middle class, were developed by ivory tower elitists who don’t want people to have freedom.

But I'll tell you, I don't believe in healthcare, labor and human dignity, because I'm an extremist or a Marxist. I believe it because I was a waitress, because I've scrubbed toilets with my mom to afford school, because I've worked double shifts to keep the lights on, because I lost my dad to cancer as a kid and had to see my mom open hospital bills in the days after. And I don't want us to live like this anymore, Greeley.

I think this is an excellent form of messaging for Democrats. It’s telling personal stories to tell voters that the country does not have to suffer the way Republicans want them to suffer. I saw this too when Kamala Harris discussed how her single mother parent struggled to manage bills, when Shontel Brown talked about her family needing Food Stamps during committee hearings on the Republican monstrosity of a bill, when Yassamin Ansari when spoke of the dignity of her immigrant parents, and when Ken Martin discussed how without Medicaid and Medicare he is not sure his family could have survived (www.dailykos.com/...).

As an aside, if you are unaware of what Democrats have been doing, you can follow diaries written by myself, Bilboteach (focusing on members of the Hispanic Caucus), Janesaunt (who writes the diary Democrats in Action) , T2 (who focuses and LGBTQ+ members of the House and Senate), and Lpeacock (who focuses on the Congressional Black Caucus) over the past number of months by clicking on this link to the group Democratic Party Spotlight. www.dailykos.com/…

Bernie began his speech with a similar message, and one I have heard from most Democrats when attacking the Trump administration. That Republicans are gutting services for Americans to give money to billionaires. He also talked about the concentration of wealth and the concentration of corporate power. This message will be one of the core arguments against the Trump regime and his enablers in future elections.

We will not accept an oligarchic form of society. We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington, making cuts to the Social Security Administration, cuts to the Veterans Administration, almost destroying the Department of Education, all so that they could give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% www.rev.com/...

He also discussed the Trump regimes Authoritarianism in a clear way, concluding that in spite of the chest thumping from his administration the Trump regime is based on cowardice.

Today we have a president who is undermining our constitution every single day, who is threatening freedom of speech and freedom of assembly…. In a way that is unprecedented, Trump is trying to intimidate the media and anyone who speaks out against them .… In other words, the so-called leader of the free world is afraid of freedom. www.rev.com/...

Now, where I see a huge difference in the approach of AOC and Bernie Sanders is in their discussion of the Democratic Party. This site, after all, is about electing more and better Democrats. I would argue that recently this site has failed in that goal. It spends too much time in rote criticisms of the Democratic Party, with diaries and comments repeating meme level tropes promoting RW talking points about the Democratic Party. Again, I don’t mind criticizing individuals when they fuck up. After all, that’s what I’m doing here. But there is not enough discussion of the hard work of most Democrats — including AOC, Shontel Brown, Ken Martin, Yassamin Ansari, Melanie Stansbury and many others.

In her speech, AOC discussed the Democratic Party by describing it as one that can improve but also one that is fighting for Americans. “We deserve better than this. And this isn't just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us too. But, Greeley, that means our communities choosing and voting for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.” www.rev.com/… She then used the example of the vote on the Continuing Resolution to tell the people of Colorado that Democrats indeed did stand up for them.

But I will say, Colorado, that when other Democrats caved, your senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper stood strong against the DC pressure and voted no. They said, "Colorado deserves better than this." Thank you for putting in that work. And in fact, all the Democrats, all the Democrats in the state of Colorado and Congress, who represent a congressional district in the state voted against that bill too. House senate, everybody. So I want to thank Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, Brittany Pettersen. Defend them Colorado. And don't stop there. I want you to look at every level of office around and support Democrats who fight, because those are the ones who can actually beat Republicans. We need to come together and spend every day between now and election day working to educate our neighbors, and give Evans and Boebert the boot, and replace them with a brawling Democrat who will stand for Colorado. www.rev.com/...

This is a message that resonates. This isn’t an attack on the Democratic Party, but a recognition of the fact that most Democrats, including every Democratic member of the Senate and House from Colorado, are saying, “Colorado deserves better for this.” And she thanks the House representatives who did so. And more importantly, she identified that what will change is for Colorado to elect more Democrats to serve Washington.

By contrast, Bernie Sander said only this about the Democratic Party, in whose Senate Caucus he is part of the leadership.

That's not just Republicans. Let's be clear. Billionaires are funding the Democratic Party and preventing that party from standing up for working families. www.rev.com/...

After the election, Sanders criticized Kamala Harris’ campaign saying she didn’t talk about working class issues (in fact she did, here is a link to her speech on October 29, 2024 if you don’t believe me). On his Fight the Oligarchy tour, he doesn’t ask that voters support “more and better” Democrats, as AOC explicitly did, he says the entire party is refusing to stand up for “working families”. This is an outright lie. In making this statement, he is in effect saying there is no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. This, too, is a lie.

There are significant omissions in AOC’s speech that I am disappointed by, but she is out here promoting the Democratic Party. She is engaging in what the core goal of this site is — the election of more and better Democrats. In this way, I was very impressed with her speech and how she defined the fight we are up against. My feelings about AOC have become much more positive than they were immediately after she was first elected. They improved even more after reading this speech.

I have long supported the policy goals of Bernie Sanders even as I was not a personal fan. If anything, his speech reinforced the concerns I’ve always had with him.

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