Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Puts Her Own Spin on Bernie Sanders’s Pitch

Even as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has fired up the American left over the past decade, his speeches have the flavor of a sociology lesson. He rarely makes himself the main character.

Which is why it is striking how differently the young leader often seen as his successor, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, approaches politics.

As she kicked off a Western tour with Mr. Sanders on Thursday in North Las Vegas, Nev., she introduced herself by name — which he never does — and used her experience waitressing to explain her politics to a crowd of several thousand people.

“I don’t believe in health care, labor and human dignity because I’m a Marxist — I believe it because I was a waitress,” she said. “Because I worked double shifts to keep the lights on and because on my worst day, I know what it feels like to feel left behind. And I know that we don’t have to live like this.”

Mr. Sanders, by contrast, delivered a version of the same speech he has given since before Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was born, railing against corporate greed. “Eat the rich,” someone yelled.

The divergent styles illustrate how, after Mr. Sanders built a political movement by emphasizing inequality in America, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez brings a contemporary flourish to their shared progressive politics.

Mr. Sanders, 83, learned politics in the 1960s. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 35, has undertaken her political education in the Trump era.

For Mr. Sanders, his political story relies on making a cogent case about inequality at the macro level. Only rarely does he speak in detail about his feelings, his middle-class upbringing or how he lost both parents by age 21. Instead, he rails against billionaires who squeeze workers and, now, run the federal government.

“The worst addiction in this country today is the greed of oligarchy,” he told supporters on Thursday. “They are like heroin addicts — they need more and more and more. And if they have to destroy Social Security and Medicaid to get what they want, that is what they will do.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez understands the power of placing herself in her audience’s shoes. On Thursday, she spoke of feeling helpless in the face of swirling personal and national chaos.

She even went a step further, borrowing a tactic patented by President Trump to portray a political attack on her as a broadside against her supporters.

Under a spring sun hot enough to disable cellphones, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd dressed in vintage Sanders campaign gear about a recent television appearance by one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers. She recalled the lawyer describing her as a mere bartender without the sufficient life experience to have important input on national affairs.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declared that the slight against her intelligence was in fact a public dismissal of the brainpower of all working-class people.

“She isn’t just talking about me here. She’s talking about you — she is talking about all of us,” she said. “Imagine what it means for our country that the president’s own lawyer cannot even conceive of a working-class person being intelligent simply because of the job that they have.”

It was the kind of political skill that has many progressive Democrats ready to anoint her as the next leader of the left-wing political movement built by Mr. Sanders, who has mostly — but not totally — ruled out running for president again in 2028. Several attendees at the rally wore shirts or hats indicating that they were ready for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to step up.

“You know, Biden waited way too long to pass the torch, right?” said Lorita Loftus, a retired postal worker from Henderson, Nev. “If that’s what is happening, it’s a wise move.”

Still, there are few topics Mr. Sanders wants to discuss less than his mortality or who might succeed him as the leader of the left.

In an interview with The New York Times this week, Mr. Sanders — who mentioned Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s name just once in his 42-minute speech on Thursday — declined to entertain discussion about whether inviting her on tour with him represented a passing of the torch.

“That’s inside-the-Beltway gossip,” he grumbled. “You got any better questions?”