Bernie Sanders and AOC will hold 'Fighting Oligarchy' rally in Tempe. Here's what to know
Two of the country's most well-known progressive politicians will hold a political rally in Arizona next week, mobilizing their supporters around "fighting oligarchy" at a time when Democrats are struggling to mount a resistance against President Donald Trump's second-term agenda.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., will appear at Arizona State University's Mullett Arena at 6 p.m. Thursday.
The event is part of Sanders' tour that will take him through a number of other swing states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
Sanders says he isn't planning to run for president, like he did in 2016 and 2020. Rather, he has promoted the tour as an effort to rally the public against Trump and coalesce Democrats around an alternative political vision.
The mobilization effort comes at a time when Democrats are still reeling from their weak performance in last year's elections, when voters handed Republicans unified control over the federal government.
The Democrats' losses sparked a heated round of finger-pointing within the party.
Moderate voices blame members of the party's left flank, such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, for alienating centrist voters.
Progressives argue Democrats are sticking too much to the status quo at a time when voters want change.
Other observers disagree over how much campaign strategy and messaging issues contributed to the party's 2024 losses versus the substance of their platform.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who caucuses as an Independent, argued in a scathing November memo that the Democrats have failed to deliver for working-class voters.
He noted that low-earning voters and minority groups increasingly picked Trump in last year's elections, continuing trends seen in prior election cycles.
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well," he wrote.
"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Probably not," Sanders continued. "In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions."