Bernie Sanders built a career grumbling about millionaires, billionaires, and the working class being sold out by corporate America. Love him or loathe him, at least Bernie had his own brand of socialism. He wasn’t AOC. He wasn’t Rashida Tlaib. He wasn’t marching in the streets shouting “defund the police.”
But now? The senator from Vermont has decided his convictions are negotiable. He’s hitching his wagon to New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a man whose platform makes Bernie’s 2016 “political revolution” look like a Sunday potluck.
Here’s the problem: Bernie is campaigning for someone who outright contradicts him on issue after issue. Either Sanders has memory loss, or he’s so desperate to stay relevant on the activist Left that he’s outsourcing his soul to the far-left fringe.
Bernie has always tried to walk a tortured middle ground on Israel. He condemned Hamas’ October 7 massacre, opposes BDS, and still clings to the dusty “two-state solution” line.
Mamdani? He co-sponsored New York’s radical “Not On Our Dime” bill targeting nonprofits tied to Israeli settlements. He’s labeled Israel’s defense against Hamas as “genocide,” and though he later backtracked, he once waved the “globalize the intifada” slogan around like a badge of honor.
Sanders says BDS isn’t the answer. Mamdani shouts it from the rooftops. Yet here’s Bernie clapping along.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Sanders made it clear: “I do not support defunding police departments.” He called for reform, more training, and even better pay for good cops.
Mamdani, meanwhile, was a loud “defund” activist. “No, we want to defund the police,” he declared, hammer in hand. Now that he’s eyeing a bigger office, he’s trying to sound moderate with “community policing” buzzwords. But the receipts are permanent.
So which is it, Bernie? Defund is “ridiculous,” or defund is your new campaign pitch?
Sanders has spent decades defending his vote for the 1994 crime bill. He insists he only did it because of the Violence Against Women Act, but the fact remains, he backed one of the most “tough on crime” bills in history.
Mamdani, by contrast, openly embraces decarceration and abolitionist rhetoric. He’s flirted with the idea that prisons shouldn’t even exist. His campaign was fueled by that platform.
Sanders locked arms with Biden on a crime bill that expanded prisons. Mamdani wants the locks broken off. And yet Bernie now campaigns like they’re ideological twins.
Here’s the kicker: Bernie once called open borders a “Koch brothers proposal.” His logic? Flooding the labor market with cheap workers hurts American wages. That was Sanders in his blunt, economic populist mode.
Mamdani is deep in the “abolish ICE” camp. He’s marched against deportations, rallied for detainees, and pushed expansive protections that make Bernie’s old arguments about working-class wages sound like a MAGA stump speech.
So why is Bernie stumping for Mamdani? Because the Left has moved past him. He’s no longer the vanguard; he’s the aging mascot, dragged along by activists who think his 2016 revolution wasn’t nearly extreme enough.
This is what desperation looks like: a man who once prided himself on being “consistent” now throwing in with a politician who rejects his past positions on Israel, policing, crime, and borders.
Bernie Sanders didn’t just move left. He didn’t just sell out. He outsourced his convictions to Zohran Mamdani, a man who never shared them in the first place.