To those who think the Democratic Party is irrevocably divided between the “moderates” and “progressives,” I want to introduce you to three candidates who will break your brain. Three candidates who have the support of America’s foremost democratic socialist and a collection of lawmakers who rally around “fiscal responsibility, national security, and pragmatic solutions that last.”
Sam Forstag, Rebecca Cooke, and Bob Brooks are all running in districts Trump carried in 2024, all come from blue-collar backgrounds, and, as you may have guessed by now, were all endorsed by both Bernie Sanders and the ostensibly “centrist” Blue Dog PAC.
These “Berniedogs” are the textbook definition of heterodoxy. They defy our stale and unproductive factional debate, and their role in American politics is instructive to anyone who believes in the Big Tent.
Not-so-strange bedfellows
Before I get into the secret sauce that makes Forstag, Cooke, and Brooks so compelling, I want to marinate on why the seemingly odd couple of Bernie Sanders and the Blue Dogs actually makes more sense than many people realize.
The Bernie side is easier to explain. In my opinion, Sanders is at his best when he’s laser-focused on his message about the 1% vs. the 99%. The 2016 Bernie Sanders (whom I knocked over a thousand doors for) wanted, above all, to increase taxes on millionaires and billionaires and transfer that wealth to the working-class.
That’s what these endorsements are about. I’m sure he disagrees with Forstag, Cooke, and Brooks on plenty; in fact, none of them support Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan. But Bernie is demonstrating that he’s willing to accept some heterodoxy in the spirit of building a political movement that will win over swingy blue-collar voters. That’s a very productive attitude, and one that his potential successors on the left would be wise to adopt.
As someone who used to work for a member of the Blue Dog Caucus, I firmly believe that they’re one of the most misunderstood factions in American politics. Crucially, I don’t think that the standard beltway definition of “centrist” accurately describes their coalition in 2026. Yes, they still advocate for a strong border, fiscal responsibility, and bipartisan policymaking. But current members like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez have an economic populist streak that would make Blue Dog co-founder Billy Tauzin, a conservative congressman-turned-PhRMA lobbyist, quake in his boots.
From MGP’s obsession with right to repair legislation (and sea lions) to Adam Gray’s fight to protect water rights in California’s Central Valley, today’s Blue Dogs are less guided by ideology and more driven by a place-based politics that embodies the character of their districts.
Before readers on the left jump down my throat, I’m not saying that the Blue Dogs have a monopoly on working-class politics. But it’s important to understand that working-class voters in rural California will care about different sociocultural issues than working-class voters in Queens. Adam Gray would be a bad fit for NY-07, and Claire Valdez likely wouldn’t be able to get elected in Central California.
The long and short of it is that, despite their differences, there’s an economic populist thread that ties the Blue Dogs with the Bernie Sanders wing. People confused by the Berniedogs should get comfortable with that friction. After all, the Big Tent is a state of mind.
The Berniedog difference
There are plenty of economically populist Democrats who don’t draw this sort of cross-factional interest. So what makes the trio of Forstag, Cooke, and Brooks different?
Cooke and Brooks are both polling ahead, while Forstag’s race is a coin flip. So a big part of the answer is that they all have a great shot at actually winning. Still, their broad intraparty appeal and the reasons behind their potential victories carry valuable lessons for the next generation of Democrats.
There are three main things that bind Forstag, Cooke, and Brooks together. The first is their shared commitment to a working-class agenda. Their economic message focuses on corporate greed, bringing costs down for working-class Americans, and getting rid of the corrupting influence of money in politics. But that doesn’t classify them as members of any particular ideological movement. For instance, Rebecca Cooke says, “I do not identify as a progressive.”
The Berniedogs also all come from blue-collar backgrounds. Forstag is a smokejumper and union leader, Cooke a working waitress, and Brooks a firefighter. While vibes and identity certainly aren’t everything, they do matter, and that kind of personal history makes the Berniedogs trusted messengers to their future constituents.
Ultimately, that’s what drew Bernie Sanders to Cooke in the first place. Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sanders, explained in a recent Politico Magazine story:
He was very excited to see someone run for office who has the experience and the understanding of what struggling people are going through, people living paycheck to paycheck. In order to be a working-class candidate in Sen. Sanders’ mind, you have to really understand: What is your community going through?”
The final and most compelling commonality is their ability to combine positions from across the ideological spectrum. This does not mean they are just picking the center position on a left-to-right binary for every issue. On one end, the Berniedogs are all committed to left economic populism. On the other, they stake out more culturally-conservative coded positions on social issues.
Forstag has a whole section on his website dedicated to protecting Second Amendment rights, Brooks highlights border security, and Cooke has bucked calls to abolish ICE. All three recognize that moderation for moderation’s sake isn’t the way forward; they must authentically reflect the values of their districts. For a candidate like Forstag, that means representing the interests of his gun-owning voters and also fighting to keep Western Montana’s public lands in public hands.
To me, the Berniedogs show the way forward for Democrats writ large. They’ve managed to unite seemingly diametrically opposed factions of the Party because they’re committed to the sort of working-class politics that delivered 40 straight years of Democratic House control — all while staking out popular positions on the issues that matter to swing voters in Trump districts.
If Democrats are ever going to build a supermajority, these are the sort of candidates they need to recruit and support.