EAU CLAIRE, Wisconsin – Bernie Sanders was up bright and early on a windswept, late October Sunday morning for the 17th stop on a month-long, nationwide campaign swing in anticipation of Tuesday’s midterm elections. But he wasn’t up any earlier than the overflow crowd that had come to see him in this western Wisconsin city of 69,421. By the time the independent senator from Vermont and two-time Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student center, voters from the nation’s ultimate swing district had filled every seat and were crowding against the walls, sitting on the floor, and spilling into the hallways at the far end of the sprawling space. Amid the sustained applause that greeted his arrival, Sanders gestured to the back of the room and half-joked, “We’ve got to knock down the door there. We’ve got a lot of folks.”

That was it for small talk. The senator launched into an appeal for Rebecca Cooke, a 38-year-old Wisconsin congressional candidate whom he endorsed more than a year ago. Cooke welcomed Sanders with an introduction that hailed him as “our champion for the working class for decades” and “one of the last people in Congress that still has a spine, that is willing to stand up (to) special interests, and continues to put people first.”

“In my view, this is the most important midterm election in the modern history of our country, or maybe the history of our country,” Sanders told the crowd. “And what Rebecca’s race is about – and the reason that I am here – is that the time is long overdue for us to hold the most dangerous president in the history of the United States accountable. But it’s not only holding Trump accountable. It is an understanding, and I know Rebecca has campaigned on this relentlessly, (that it is possible) to create an economy that works for all people – not just the one percent.”

Democratic campaigns across the country have relied a good deal on surrogates this year, with much attention paid to late-stage campaign stops by former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris and potential 2028 presidential contenders such as New York US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, California US Rep. Ro Khanna, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. But no one has done it with quite the consistent messaging and strategic focus that Sanders has brought to the campaign trail. The senator, who polls frequently identify as the most popular sitting elected official in the United States, began talking about the midterms shortly after Trump’s second inauguration, and used his 2025 “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of Republican red districts and states to argue that the 2026 election would offer a historic opportunity to transform American politics, place checks and balances on the White House, and strike a blow for governance by the people rather than wealthy elites. 

Now, with the November 3 elections just days away, and an onslaught of billionaire-funded spending to prop up the flailing Republican effort to keep control of Congress, Sanders has been relentlessly making his closing argument to voters nationwide.  In the past few weeks, he has attracted thousands of organizers, activists and curious voters to events from Maine to California, on a tenacious schedule that is every bit as ambitious in its goals as any candidate or party leader. He told the cheering crowd in Eau Claire that this is the moment to “revitalize American democracy” by replacing Trump-aligned Republicans like Wisconsin US Rep. Derrick Van Orden with working-class Democrats such as Cooke.

Sanders delivered a similar message the night before in Duluth, Minnesota, where an even larger crowd packed a school gymnasium to hear his pitch forDemocratic-Farmer-Labor Party US Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan—a progressive who, like another Sanders endorsee, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, beat a more politically cautious, AIPAC-aligned Democrat in the primaries and is now locked in a fall contest that could define control of the Senate. “I am so grateful that you’re on Team Peggy,” Flanagan said in her introduction of Sanders, “because the coach of our team is here!”

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After making early endorsements of working-class candidates in House and Senate races—many of whom faced primary fights—Sanders has used digital platforms to participate in dozens of organizing calls, virtual canvass launches and livestream conversations to ramp up support for Democratic contenders. And he has shown up, often repeatedly, for rallies with candidates such as Flanagan and Cooke. This unflagging, “all-hands-on-deck” energy has Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison describing the 85-year-old senator as the great progressive movement builder of our time.

“Bernie is shifting the ground, giving people hope,” says Ellison, who campaigned with Sanders and Flanagan in Duluth.

So far this month, Sanders has appeared at 20 major events in seven states. He’s been in Maine for Senate candidate Troy Jackson, in Florida for Senate candidate Angie Nixon, in Texas with Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar for that state’s Democratic ticket, in California for multiple congressional candidates (as well as for the campaign in support of an ambitious ballot proposal to tax billionaires) and – just this week – in Michigan for three major events with El-Sayed.

At these stops, which often take him far from the well-trodden paths of American politics, Sanders does more than deliver a standard stump speech. He asks people in the crowds to talk about the issues that matter to them, and then he launches into deep discussions about those issues—data centers and artificial intelligence, single-payer health care, how economic inequality threatens the health and well-being of low-income Americans, and the desperate need for the Democratic Party to abandon deference to corporate donors and deliver for working-class Americans. “I’m fighting the two-front war. The first of the two fights is ending Republican control of the House and the Senate, and holding Trump accountable. But the second issue is having the Democratic Party do what the American people want it to do,” Sanders explained in an interview in Eau Claire. “I think you heard an example of that today. This is not New York City. We’re in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. All over the country, people understand that we need bold action to address the needs of the working class, that we need to take on the oligarchs, that healthcare is a human right.”

Sanders hasn’t just been donating his time. He’s also been donating his money and his team. The senator has joined online fundraising appeals to raise more than $3 million for the grassroots campaigns of endorsed candidates in states across the country. He has dispatched full-time staffers to work on the ground in key states such as Minnesota, Florida and Michigan. And he has transferred roughly $2.3 million from his own committee – including $1,250,000 to support El-Sayed, more than $300,000 to help Nixon in Florida, more than $300,000 to Flanagan’s Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota, $100,000 to Troy Jackson’s Maine  Senate run, and thousands more to boost the Senate bids of Democrats Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Scott Colom in Mississippi and independent Dan Osborn in Nebraska, and the congressional bids of Michigan Democrats Will Lawrence and Donavan McKinney  – with an eye toward helping organize on-the-ground, in-person campaigns that counter the massive spending by billionaires and special interest groups on television ads backing Republicans.

“Any progressive movement that’s going to be successful has got to have some people who are fulfilling the function that Bernie’s filling right now,” says Ellison. “A candidate like Abdul El-Sayed needs help. Bernie’s in a position to help. And he does help. He comes to it in a meaningful way, and brings people with him, and puts us in a position (to mount a stronger campaign) for somebody who is overtly talking about putting money in your pocket, getting money out of politics and Medicare for All. That’s a huge thing. That’s an enormous thing.”

For his part, Sanders says, “This is a debate about the very fabric of American society — whether we remain a democratic society or (become) an authoritarian society, where we engage in endless wars or not, where we have a government that vaguely represents the needs of working families or one that is totally owned by the oligarchs. So, yes, I worry very much about the future of this country if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, and I’m doing everything I can to prevent it.”

And the best way to prevent it, he says, is by returning to the grassroots and campaigning face-to-face with people in places like Duluth and Eau Claire.

“What I have always believed is that, at the end of the day, the way you win elections is by grassroots activism,” says Sanders. “People like Rebecca are winning elections—she won the primary, and hopefully she’ll win the general—because of the grassroots support that she has. People going out, knocking on doors, talking to their neighbors. I know that sounds very old-fashioned. But I, a thousand times over, prefer to invest in that vision and work with those types of people, rather than putting stupid ads on television that cost a fortune.”