Centrist Senator Elissa Slotkin complained that AOC and Bernie Sanders’ use of oligarchy implies she thinks Americans are stupid. Corporate hack?
Sen. Elissa Slotkin undermines progressive messaging.
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Summary
Sen. Bernie Sanders rebukes centrist Democrat Elissa Slotkin for urging Democrats to drop the term “oligarchy,” insisting that everyday Americans both understand and experience the concentration of wealth and power the word describes. Citing massive rallies and stark inequality statistics, the host of Politics Done Right argues that avoiding the label only serves corporate donors. He warns that unless Democrats confront oligarchic control head-on, working-class voters will continue to feel abandoned and democracy itself will erode.
- Slotkin claims “oligarchy” does not “resonate” and suggests softer language.
- Sanders counters that large crowds prove voters grasp the term and the reality behind it.
- He cites the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 90% as clear evidence of U.S. oligarchy.
- Corporate money, from Elon Musk to AIPAC-backed super-PACs, skews both parties’ agendas.
- Sanders urges Democrats to name oligarchy, tax extreme wealth, and curb big-money politics to restore faith in democracy.
Progressives see Slotkin’s linguistic policing as a thin shield for donor interests. By naming oligarchy, Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez demystify structural injustice and rally multiracial, working-class power against it. Soft-pedaling the crisis would only embolden plutocrats and deepen disillusionment; calling it out is the first step toward wealth taxes, public campaign financing, and an economy that finally serves the many instead of the few.
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Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s complaint that Democrats should retire the word “oligarchy” crystallizes the fault line between the party’s Wall Street-friendly center and its insurgent progressive wing. In her Politico interview previewing a self-styled “war plan” to defeat Donald Trump, the freshman Michigan senator insisted that terms such as “weak and woke” plague Democrats because coastal elites speak in language that “doesn’t resonate.” She urged colleagues to talk about “kings,” not oligarchs, as if voters could recognize monarchy but not concentrated economic power. Slotkin’s framing says far more about donor anxieties than about popular comprehension.
Within forty-eight hours, Sen. Bernie Sanders responded on NBC’s Meet the Press and on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour he now co-headlines with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He reminded viewers that tens of thousands fill arenas from Los Angeles to rural Folsom specifically to hear him use that word. “Americans are not as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks,” he shot back, tying oligarchy to Elon Musk’s record-shattering political spending and to super PACs such as AIPAC’s that flood Democratic primaries with Republican money. Michigan Advance recorded the exchange in detail and captured Sanders’s warning that if Democrats refuse to name the system oppressing their constituents, voters will “turn their backs on democracy.”
Slotkin’s linguistic squeamishness tracks neatly with the interests of her big donors. AIPAC has announced a $100 million bankroll aimed squarely at defeating progressives who challenge corporate or military orthodoxy, channeling GOP megadonor cash into Democratic primaries. The group already spent more than $50 million in 2024 House contests and helped topple Rep. Jamaal Bowman. By urging Democrats to swap “oligarchs” for something else, Slotkin shields benefactors whose plutocratic reach depends on bipartisan silence.
Yet the material reality Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez describe is not rhetorical flourish; it is statistical fact. Federal Reserve data show that the richest one percent now owns roughly 35 percent of all U.S. household wealth, while the bottom ninety percent’s share has fallen below 30 percent. The top 0.1 percent alone commands wealth on par with the entire bottom 90 percent, an imbalance that social scientists link directly to policy choices—tax loopholes, stock buybacks, union suppression—that politicians in both parties have enabled.
Those abstract percentages translate into lived crisis. The latest HUD Point-in-Time count found more than 771,800 Americans sleeping in shelters, cars, or on sidewalks on a single night in January 2024—a jump of eighteen percent in one year and the highest figure recorded since the survey began. Working families now constitute the fastest-growing segment of the unhoused, a brutal confirmation that wage stagnation and skyrocketing rents form the human face of oligarchic policy.
Meanwhile oligarchs deploy their fortunes to hard-wire government in their favor. Elon Musk personally spent at least $277 million to return Trump to the White House and bankroll allied Republicans, making him the cycle’s largest donor and gaining him a direct role in federal layoffs through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Such “investments” dwarf the campaign budgets of entire states and exemplify what Sanders calls “government by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.”
Progressives therefore reject Slotkin’s vocabulary police not out of semantic stubbornness but out of strategic clarity. Naming oligarchy lays the groundwork for policies that attack it: wealth-tax brackets on fortunes above $50 million; public financing of elections to break the donor stranglehold; a guaranteed housing program akin to the veteran model that has cut homelessness among former service members by more than 55 percent; and aggressive antitrust to halt corporate consolidation in everything from agribusiness to broadband. Polling shows majority support—even among independents—for each of these measures once framed as remedies to billionaire domination, a linguistic and political terrain Slotkin appears desperate to abandon.
History offers a warning. When Democrats muted economic populism during the 1990s deregulation spree and the 2008 Wall Street bailout, the party presided over a hollowing out of the middle class that fueled Trumpism. Continuing that pattern by censoring the term “oligarchy” would signal allegiance to donors over voters and risk ceding moral authority to demagogues who at least name the pain—even if they lie about its cause. The progressive project insists instead on clear language, structural analysis, and material solutions. If Democrats hope to “retake the flag” in 2026 or 2028, they must begin by retaking the courage to describe America as it is—and to fight for an America where oligarchy no longer rules.
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