Bernie and AOC Sheepdog for the Democrats

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

26 Mar 2025

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are trying to re-engage disaffected voters who are rightly disengaged from the Democratic Party. Big rallies can’t hide the fact that the Fighting Oligarchy Tour leads misguided people right back to oligarchy.

“Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election.”
Bruce Dixon

The late Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report co-founder and Managing Editor, is credited with coining the term “sheepdog” to describe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016. Dixon was correct and prescient. Sanders lost the nomination to Clinton and as promised, endorsed her anyway. She went on to lose to Donald Trump that year and Sanders’ loyalty was for naught. He was blamed for Hillary Clinton’s defeat and was demonized by her and others as being responsible for Trump’s victory.

Ten years later, Sanders is still playing the sheepdog role, not as a presidential candidate but now as a reliable party elder and loyal company man with the help of congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is popularly known as AOC. They are holding rallies across the country, the Fighting Oligarchy Tour, and drawing large crowds of liberal white people in their thousands.

Alas, there is nothing about attending a rally with a crowd of other people that will in any way defeat the U.S. oligarchy. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are sheepdogging ten years after the moniker describing their actions was created. Their goal is to save the sinking ship that is the Democratic Party, which has now lost legitimacy with the voters it needs to win the white house again. Polls show a record-low approval rating for the party, with a mere 27% of those polled having a positive view of the democrats and a measly 7% having a very positive opinion. After the debacle of the coup against Biden, which resulted in Kamala Harris being a $1 billion loser, public disapproval was inevitable.

The U.S. oligarchy is a bipartisan two-headed monster, and no one should know that more than Bernie Sanders. The democratic head of the beast did everything in its power in 2016 and 2020 to deny him the nomination, although Sanders is not the leftist that many believe him to be. No matter. Even a little bit of liberal reformism is too much for the democrats’ deep-pocketed donors. Every democratic presidential winner is totally in sync with their demands. No one gets the job without being vetted first. Joe Biden was the party’s winner in 2020 because he promised them, “Nothing will fundamentally change.”

Democracy didn’t suddenly disappear because a republican is in office instead of a democrat or because Elon Musk is constantly at Donald Trump’s side. The people of this country live under authoritarian billionaire rule devoted to accelerating a race to the bottom for most people in this country. That couldn’t have happened without the complete connivance of the Democratic Party.

The point of Sanders and AOC’s extravagant exercise is to herd democrats in while they are still reeling from Trump’s elimination of the United States Department of Education and firing thousands of federal workers across every agency. Democrats are both anxious and angry at Trump while simultaneously nervously pleading for their party to do something. The angst is understandable because capitulation is the order of the day for the liberal order.

Columbia University acceded to Trump’s demands that they had already been in the process of implementing. They have pushed out faculty who condemned Israel’s war crimes and suspended and expelled students even before Trump withheld $400 million in funds the government was contracted to pay them. The law firm Paul Weiss likewise crumbled under pressure and didn’t try to fight what were likely illegal sanctions leveled against it by a dubious executive order.

The mostly democratic liberal class is going along to get along, and no one should think that Bernie or AOC or the rest of the democrats are any different. Their goal is to energize people who instead should be expressing disgust with the democrats and leaving their failed party behind. The meaningless tour is an underhanded effort to fool them into returning to the fold. In addition, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is mentioned as a possible 2028 presidential candidate and the Fighting Oligarchy Tour should be seen as a campaign trial run for her. Instead of waiting in long lines to hear warmed over nonsense from fake leftists, democrats should be building independent political power outside of the electoral system.

One of the issues that goes unaddressed by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez is the continued U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza. On this and other issues, Ocasio-Cortez gives cover to the party. She famously claimed that Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly” on a ceasefire in Gaza while the Biden administration never wavered from arming the apartheid state. The insistence on continuing with genocide was just one reason that Kamala Harris lost voters in the 2024 election.

As for Sanders, no one should forget that he is a zionist who lived on an Israeli kibbutz as a young man. He hopes that zionism can be more liberal, and so he doesn’t criticize the Israeli state. He personalizes by constantly invoking Benjamin Netanyahu’s name, deflecting from the central issue of the U.S./Israeli alliance and its mutually agreed upon support for ethnic cleansing. “Netanyahu has not allowed any aid into Gaza in 22 days. He broke the ceasefire, resuming a bombing campaign that has killed more than 50,000 people. Now, he is threatening a long-term occupation of Gaza. NO MORE MILITARY AID TO NETANYAHU’S WAR MACHINE.“

Israel’s genocide cannot be personified by one man, but if you’re a reformer cosplaying as a leftist, criticism of an individual is all that will be countenanced. While his fake leftist tour draws thousands of people, Sanders gives Trump cover, praising him for “cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger.”

The Democratic Party may be able to limp along and win the midterm elections in 2026 or the presidency in 2028. Its fortunes ebb and flow with events and their ability to find candidates from a place called Hope or who are audaciously hopeful and claim they want to change. But the mask is off for millions of people who were once their reliable voters.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez may be able to give their party cover; that is the role they play. They are allowed to come out from time to time and even offer a little criticism here and there while knowing full well that, should they govern again, there will be excuses and a beat down of anyone who really is on the left. Bernie and AOC are hoping that they can fool all of the people all of the time.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at [email protected].