Note: This post is a few days late. Hopefully you didn’t need Uncle Sam to convince you to vote!
“In a dictatorship the government runs the people…But in America the people run the government…With this!”
–Uncle Sam
Bernie was right about everything.
Ten years ago, Bernie Sanders tried to tell the Democratic Establishment that it had left behind its soul as the party of the people. Instead, it had become a comfortable party of triangulators and compromisers, barely distinguishable from the Republicans.
He was rebuffed by the party, but not without a fight, and not without millions of Americans, especially young Americans, excited about a government that served all the people. Instead, the party stuck to its same old ways, lost the election to the most ridiculous pseudo-populist in history. The rest is history.
In 2026, the pseudo-populist having failed to deliver, and in fact exhibiting an unprecedented combination of greed and pathological narcissism, the American people decided to give populism, or at least a government that actually cared about them, another try.
Senator Bernie Sanders is officially an Independent, not a Democrat. But the newly-elected Democratic Senate, which includes a number of new Senators, should look to him as a model.
Bernie’s classic railing against the millionaires and billionaires now includes at least one trillionaire. Whatever the post-election analysis tells us about the driving issues, implicit is the fact of inequality. Americans suffering from gas prices look at rich people getting richer from oil company profits. Americans besieged by data centers look at rich people getting richer from AI businesses. Americans who can’t afford the most basic health care look at rich people getting richer from pharma and medical tech.
In the end, it is about the scourge of inequality, in terms of economics, political power, and lifestyle. Bernie has been saying that loudly for years, and the message has finally landed in government, at the national, state and local levels.
Bernie was right about everything.
© 2026 Bob Schwartz
