WARREN, MI — Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, brought his national tour called, “Stop Oligarchy” to the swing area of Macomb county this weekend. The location was chosen because it is a swing area represented by a Republican. The crowd in Warren was estimated at between 9,000 and 10,000 which is unheard of for a non-Presidential rally.
Sanders’ visit to Michigan followed rallies that drew sizeable crowds in rural Wisconsin, another swing state won by Biden in 2020 that reverted to Trump in 2024. “You gotta do what you gotta do. The country’s in trouble and I want to play my role,” Sanders told the crowd at Lincoln High School in Warren.
Macomb County has held a special place for political scientists since the county voted for Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. This shift of blue collar, union voters from a Democratic candidate to a Republican candidate coined the phrase Reagan Democrats to describe those who had voted for Reagan but still voted for Democrats down the ballot such as Congressman David Bonior in Macomb.
According to reporting by Michigan Advance:
“The change that we have experienced over hundreds of years of our nationhood only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back,” Sanders said.
But he said that the current landscape is unlike anything the country has experienced before because voters can no longer agree on a shared set of facts, which he said hampers the country’s ability to debate important issues.
“We’re up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the Big Lie,” Sanders said. “The Big Lie is not just stretching the truth; the Big Lie is not just fibbing. The Big Lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that have no basis in reality.”
“Instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class,” Sanders said.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain spoke at the rally wearing a shirt that read “eat the rich,” which he said he had not worn since the Big Three automakers went on strike in 2023. “Billionaires don’t have a right to exist,” Fain told the crowd.
A social media post from Sanders summed up the weekend:
