We Need More Independents

One argument in favor of pro-worker candidates running as independents rather than Democrats, suggested by Sanders in his Times interview, is that it may be necessary if working-class candidates continue to be shut out or marginalized by the Democratic Party:

“If there’s any hope for the Democratic Party, it is that they’re going to have to reach out — open the doors and let working-class people in, let working-class leadership come into the party,” he said. “If not, people will be running as independents, I think, all over this country.”

Independent working-class candidates likely have a better shot at winning elections in districts and states where the Democratic Party brand is trashed. Dan Osborn’s recent campaign for US Senate in Nebraska is a case in point: the mechanic and former Kellogg’s strike leader ran as an independent in 2024 and won 47 percent of the vote against Republican incumbent senator Deb Fischer. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, lost the state to Trump by 20 points. (Osborn has since started a political action committee, the Working Class Heroes Fund, to recruit more working-class candidates to run for office.)

Of course, Sanders’s own career is a testament to the promise of independent runs in certain contexts. He has run as an independent since his successful bid for Burlington mayor in 1980, when Republicans and Democrats had a roughly equal hold on Vermont’s electorate.

Pro-worker independents in the mold of Sanders and Osborn could speak more credibly to angry and disaffected voters, people like the Las Vegas rally attendees who described their struggles with paying for their kids’ college and worrying about being able to afford their prescription drugs or their rent or their credit card bills. Such candidates might also have a better shot than discredited Democrats at reaching people like Press’s union worker friends, “tired of paying taxes and union dues and protective of their guns,” who voted for Trump.

Candidates who run and win as independents are also less likely to be dependent on the existing Democratic institutional apparatus. For instance, especially in the deep-blue urban districts where progressives and socialists are mostly winning office now, candidates who run as Democrats will be mostly concerned with winning over Democratic primary voters who have not given up on the party, so endorsements from established Democratic politicians and party leaders are more important.

Independent candidates, by contrast, will often be less focused on appealing to these high-information Democratic partisans, and so they will depend less on endorsements and goodwill from party leaders. Independents can also be expected to be less reliant on the Democratic donor and consultant and nonprofit networks who currently exercise so much sway in the party; we could even imagine them one day depending instead on PACs like Osborn’s Working Class Heroes Fund and other independent funding sources.

Insofar as the Left wants elected officials to forge a path distinct from that of the Democrats, who in their own way are eager to let billionaires like Mark Cuban set the agenda and too sclerotic to even mount a vigorous opposition to Trump, having more independents in office could be a boon.

Casting a Wider Net

Moreover, more pro-worker candidates running as independents is strategically vital because it can facilitate working-class politics getting a broader hearing than they would in the typical progressive campaign focused on the Democratic primary electorate rather than the voting population at large.

Since 2016, progressives and socialists (including AOC and members of the Squad) have often made their way into Congress and state legislatures by winning Democratic primaries in very liberal districts; because of the partisan slant of these districts, the primary winner then proceeds to an uncompetitive general election, where the majority of voters can be expected to vote for whoever has the “D” next to their name. (Things don’t always work out this way, however: see India Walton’s 2021 run for mayor in Buffalo. After being defeated by the insurgent Walton in the Democratic primary, incumbent mayor Byron Brown ran as an independent and allied with Republicans to beat her in the general election.)

For those of us who want to advance a pro-worker, anti-corporate political vision distinct from what’s on offer from both Republicans and Democrats, having the actual political contest confined to the primary is a problem. As anyone with less politically engaged friends and family might suspect, far fewer people pay attention to and vote in primaries than in general elections.

Take, for example, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), one of the most recent additions to the Squad’s ranks. In 2022, Casar won the Democratic primary in the safely blue 35th Congressional District with about 25,000 out of 61,000 votes; he proceeded to the general election, where he won 130,000 out of 180,000 votes. This dynamic means that left-leaning campaigns are talking mostly to the much smaller Democratic primary electorate rather than the electorate at large. It also means that these campaigns are not forced to articulate a distinctive political vision to the broader public.

Working-class candidates running as independents would have to speak to the general electorate. They would have to say why they’re running as independents, and they would have the opportunity to present a pro-worker program to this broader, cross-partisan audience and explain how it differs from the corporate-friendly programs of the Republicans and Democrats.

In many cases, that will be a more difficult task than winning over the smaller group of highly committed Democratic partisans. But if the Left ever wants to win a majority of Americans over to a different way of doing politics, it can’t be avoided. We need to try to organize the Trump-voting union workers of the world, alongside people such as Dina Garibay, a Latina second-grade teacher in Las Vegas frightened by the Trump administration who has been “frequently disappointed by” the Democrats. (Like many attendees at the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally, Garibay reported struggling to pay rent, she told the Times, “every single teacher I know can’t afford a home.”)

And if more pro-worker politicians are running and winning as independents, that may exert pressure on Democrats themselves to move in a more populist direction. Few things focus the minds of party leaders, after all, like the fear of losing elections.

The Question of Organization

Can more Sanders– and Osborn–style independents running for office help yield a more effective opposition to Trump and corporate power in general? That depends in part on how well these independents and their left-wing allies among the Democrats can coordinate with each other, as well as whether they can organize and mobilize a popular base.

Can working-class independents help forge a new sense of political identity, based around class interests and the struggle for genuine democracy as well as pushback against Trump’s attacks on our existing rights, that cuts through the culture war and Republican–Democrat polarization? What could that look like? Might independents and like-minded Democrats form an organization to cohere anti-oligarchy forces and coordinate their activities?

That sort of organization — call it the Anti-Oligarchy Alliance — might engage in the sorts of activities that an opposition party worth its salt would be doing. The Anti-Oligarchy Alliance could adopt a simple platform of popular demands and endorse and fundraise for pro-worker candidates, whether running as independents or Democrats like socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. It could run its own media outlets directed at working-class Americans. It could organize mass mobilizations and protests against the Trump administration’s assaults on federal workers and civil liberties; maybe it could even lead that march on Washington that Kelly Press imagined.

And since a revitalization of labor will be essential to taking on corporate power, the Anti-Oligarchy Alliance could work with labor unions to boost new organizing, coordinate solidarity efforts to support strikes and union drives, and encourage young people to join the labor movement as rank-and-file organizers. Small-d democratic organizations that align with Anti-Oligarchy Alliance goals, like union locals and Democratic Socialists of America chapters, might in turn endorse and support the front’s efforts.

Would or could such an organization ultimately need its own ballot line? This is a perpetual question on the Left, made more difficult by the enormous legal barriers to achieving such a line. But we don’t need to settle that question to agree that having more independent working-class candidates is a good thing — or to agree that Sanders, unlike Democratic Party leadership, is once again raising the fundamental political questions.