Provpnadvice.com – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday contrasted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D) policies with President Trump’s, responding to cries against socialism amid the recent wave of democratic socialist primary election victories.
“Trump cuts funding for childcare, Mamdani thinks that we should have free and universal childcare,” Sanders told online progressive commentator Jack Cocchiarella on MeidasTouch’s “ On Sunday ” show on YouTube. “Mamdani is trying to build low-income and affordable housing in New York City. Trump is cutting funding.”
Sanders added that Mamdani opposes, “as most of us do, the endless wars that are being fought right now through Trump, as well as the extremist Israeli government and their genocidal policies in Gaza,” whereas “Trump supports Netanyahu,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Who do you think is on the side of the American people on these issues?” Sanders said. “I think what we are talking about is where the American people want us to be.”
The longtime organizer said all Trump and his allies who have decried democratic socialists running for office and winning against incumbent Democrats have done is “come up with this boogeyman of communism.”
Trump, his conservative allies and many mainstream Democrats have dismissed the rising tide of democratic socialists advancing to the fall midterms. Some Democratic Party mainstays have argued against democratic socialists’ winning capability.
Prominent progressives like Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, meanwhile, who has campaigned for progressive candidates like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D), has pointed to major Democratic losses, including at the hands of Trump in 2016 and 2024, as examples that voters want something different.
“There are a lot of people who are just like, ‘This is not working,'” Piker said in a preview for CNN’s “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper” set to air Sunday night.
Democratic members of Congress have pushed back on the idea that their party is in trouble, with many arguing that they have a tent big enough for differing viewpoints. Even the differences over support for Israel or disagreements with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — an organization and not a party — are not considered by mainstream Democrats as a socialist takeover from within the party.
“The reality is that has the DSA taken over the Democratic Party? No,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) previously said . “Does it represent anywhere approaching a majority of the party? No. But it does represent a visible vocal minority within the party, and there are DSA elected officials who are among the most popular elected officials in the country, so it’s a political reality.”
Other Democrats have opted to leave the party if progressives and democratic socialists claim the party as their own, including strategist James Carville.
“To talk about the larger Democratic Party, post the election in Michigan going forward, I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker,” Carville said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.”
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