Steve Bannon at the 2025 Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida on July 12, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Although Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is now 84, he continues to have a major influence on Millennial and Generation Z candidates. And one of them — 29-year-old Melat Kiros, backed by Sanders — ousted 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in a Democratic congressional primary in Colorado on Tuesday. Kiros isn't the only self-described "democratic socialist" to win in recent weeks, and as MAGA Republican Steve Bannon sees it, the victory of Kiros and others is a major warning sign for the GOP.
During an interview with Politico, Bannon — host of the "War Room" vodcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump administration — argued that the lesson from the recent wave of "democratic socialist" victories is that Republicans need to lean more heavily on right-wing MAGA populism, not move away from it.
Bannon told Politico, "We are facing a new politics. We're seeing the dying of the old politics before us. You're seeing it burn to the ground before you."
Too many traditional conservatives, Bannon stressed, are clinging to the Republican Party's "old politics" even though GOP voters have moved on.
After democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, Bannon argued that his victory underscored the populist angst many voters are feeling — and that angst, he said, was also evident in Kiros' upset on Tuesday.
"The establishment has finally awakened to, it's not New York City, it's not inner-city Manhattan, it's not just the immigrants or the illegal aliens in the boroughs — this is going to be nationwide," Bannon told Politico. "Yes, clearly, it's Denver. It's one of the more liberal cities, but it's still the American West. It's still Colorado. When I went and talked to donors about what was coming, they laughed in my face. They said, 'You don't understand Democratic politics, you don't understand that (former New York Gov. Andrew) Cuomo has $40 million, that Cuomo has the New York Post and the New York Times endorsements. He's got all the big Jewish organizations, he's got the Catholic Church, he's got the firemen, he's got the cops, he's got every endorsement.' And I said, 'I don't care about that. What Mamdani has is, today, 1000 people canvassing, going door-to-door in the boroughs — in Queens, in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, that's what's going to determine this.' And they just laughed and said, 'We have $40 million, and Fox loves us.' And Cuomo got smoked."
The "consultant class of the Republican Party," Bannon argued, is being "caught off guard" by democratic socialists who are showing that they have a strong ground game.
"To beat Mamdani," Bannon told Politico, "you have to have intense, ongoing and massive voter engagement. You also have to get out your core base even more. The only thing that's going to save the Republicans is a massive turnout of the lower propensity, lower information Trump voters — already Trump voters — at presidential election-type numbers in these congressional districts to save the House, otherwise you're going to get overwhelmed…. You have to come up with solutions. The Republicans don't know how to respond…. We are facing a new politics. We're seeing the dying of the old politics before us. You're seeing it burn to the ground before you."
Bannon continued, "Artificial intelligence, the oligarchs and the threat of these kinds of Marxist jihadists — it's going to redefine politics, and he who is prepared to take it on, you're going to see the rise of these people. If you are playing the old politics of tax cuts and wars everywhere and doing the bidding of Israel, let me be blunt — you're finished. I just keep telling people, it's a flashing red light, and the (Senate Majority Leader) John Thunes of the world and (House Speaker Mike) Johnson better understand that the old politics are gone."
