Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are barnstorming the country on what they are calling the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.” The Vermonter took a break from speechifying against President Trump and Elon Musk (the pair is expected to draw 20,000 supporters at Denver tonight) to outline to the Times his own intention to “rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party.” 

So stunning was this suggestion that the Times headlined the conversation as “Bernie Sanders Has an Idea for the Left: Don’t Run as Democrats.” The socialist, famously an Independent, sees defections from the Democrats as the path to “defeat Trumpism and we can transform the political situation in America.” Mr. Sanders, who mounted two robust runs for the Democratic nomination for president, now counsels abandoning the party.

Mr. Sanders is hardly the only one eyeing the exits in respect of the Democrats. An NBC poll out this week shows that only 27 percent of voters have positive views of the party, and a meager 7 percent possess a “very” favorable impression of the party of FDR and JFK. Meanwhile, despite economic headwinds, Mr. Trump is approved of by 48 percent of Americans. The highest-ranking Democrat, Senator Schumer, faces a tidal wave of discontent. 

Mr. Sanders is apparently among those who think that the Democrats, with whom he has long had a contentious relationship, are unsalvageable. His suggestion, though, that his leftist comrades exit the party could be just about the only antidote for what ails the Democrats. Some leaders of the left appear to be belatedly reckoning with the drift. Witness Governor Newsom’s colloquies with Stephen Bannon and Charlie Kirk.

Mr. Sanders’s suggestion has set off alarm bells among those invested in a leftist Democratic Party. New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore calls Mr. Sanders’s call “oddly timed and pernicious” and reckon that it would cede “influence to centrists.”  Mr. Kilgore reasons that Mr. Sanders’s behest would make “a bad situation for progressives a whole lot worse” when “many progressives believe their time to take over the party has arrived.”

The plan to leave the Democrats, in any event, appears to be taking root, at least in the upper precincts of Bernie-world. This week his former press secretary and senior adviser, Symone Sanders Townsend, announced on the air that “I’m about to change my registration to independent, first and foremost” because she’s irked at how her party “blew it” with respect to the negotiations, led by Mr. Schumer, over a potential government shut down. 

For the time being, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez exert strong gravitational pulls over the Democrats, to the party’s peril and America’s misfortune. The disgruntled duo lead the anti-Israel caucasus in Congress. Mr. Sanders this week came out against supplying any martial aid whatsoever to the Jewish state. Some see AOC’s criticism of Mr. Schumer as prelude to a primary challenge. Or could she see her future in another party altogether?

All of this talk of leftists bailing on the Democrats is downstream from the refashioning Mr. Trump had wrought with respect to the Republicans. Districts all across America — and especially at New York City — reddened in November. New data disclose that younger voters flocked to Mr. Trump’s standard, as did Hispanics, Asians, and some segments of the Jewish vote. Mr. Trump pitched a big tent. Now Mr. Sanders wants Democrats to empty theirs. 

Which brings us to a series of questions — on what party lines are Comrades Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez going to run in their next elections? Is Ms. Ocasio-Cortez going to leave the Democratic Party that sent her to Congress? For which party would Mr. Sanders run if he once again seeks the presidency in 2028? Could America see a Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez ticket on the socialist line? We don’t mind saying that it’s not yet clear to us who will get the last laugh.