The populist path for Democrats has to be that of Bernie Sanders, not RFK Jr.

Call me crazy, but have you noticed there is one politician who reliably stirs up Democrats?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said no to a third run for president in April. But he keeps igniting flames of love among the Democrats’ activist base.

Sanders is older than Biden, but he still excites liberals when he says out loud that bullying and threats from House Republicans forced a debt ceiling deal upon President Biden.

Ever passionate, Sanders stood up to vote against the debt ceiling deal. He argued that Biden should not have negotiated under pressure from extremists among the House Republicans.

Sanders also speaks as a fearless populist in condemning former President Trump.

He describes Trump and other Republicans running for president as demagogues seeking “to undermine American democracy,” by taking away a woman’s right to have an abortion while ignoring  “gun violence, or racism, sexism, or homophobia.”

Sanders’s priority is preventing Trump’s brand of angry, racially divisive rightwing politics from returning to the White House.

“So, I’m in to do what I can to see [Biden] is reelected,” he told the Associated Press.

His decision to stand by Biden is now the model for the nation’s strongest liberal voices in Congress, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who served as co-chair of Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2020.

But even as he passes on the presidential race, Sanders remains the highest-profile flamethrower pulling Biden to the left.

In March, polls showed him running second for the Democratic presidential nomination, behind President Biden. He led every other Democrat, including Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Sanders is especially popular among young Democrats. That is a sharp contrast with President Biden. A recent NPR/ Marist poll showed voters between the ages of 18 and 29 giving Biden an anemic 44 percent approval rating.

But those young voters are part of the 93 percent of Democrats who agree with Sanders on backing Biden in case Republicans nominate Trump, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC polling.

Sanders’s decision to stand by Biden has opened the door to fringe candidates getting into the Democratic presidential primary to challenge Biden. 

A recent CNN poll found that while 60 percent of Democrats support Biden for the nomination, close to 30 percent are open to an insurgent candidate. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an opponent of vaccinations, gets support from 20 percent of Democrats, and Marianne Williamson, a wellness author, gets 8 percent of the party’s support.

Kennedy is getting a boost from his well-known last name and from frequent appearances on conservative media delighted to start a fight to damage Biden among Democrats.

Kennedy’s message has elements of Sanders’s furious critique of corporate greed. But unlike Sanders, Kennedy also feeds far-right delight with conspiracy theories. 

“Democrats would be foolish to mock or belittle RFK Jr.,” Michael Ceraso, a former Sanders aide, told The Hill last week. “Every time we make fun of those who hold fringe positions, we lose. The Democratic Party acting smug never works…Take RFK seriously. As Bernie did in 2016, RFK has the potential to activate fringe anger if we mock them.”

The greatest impact of Kennedy’s candidacy will not by on the 2024 race, but on the direction of the Democratic Party beyond the Biden presidency.

As Matt Lewis wrote in the Daily Beast, “The sort of conspiratorial populism that Kennedy embraces is on the rise in America. That’s where the energy is… Trump has already taken over the GOP. What happens if the Democratic Party also falls to the siren call of the populist zeitgeist?” 

Sanders is at the other end of populism from Trump and his imitators in the Republican party.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), currently running second to Trump in polls, is campaigning as a Trump-like figure, looking for a fight with liberals, academics, the media and corporations.

“The easiest way to prove one’s tribal loyalty in 2020s America is by theatrically hating the other tribe,” the editor in chief of Christianity Today, Russell Moore, told The New York Times last week in describing DeSantis’s approach to the GOP primary race.

The future of American politics for both Republicans and Democrats now looks to be heading toward an embrace of populist messages. But Sanders got there first. As an independent who calls himself a “Democratic Socialist,” he stands apart from today’s two-party structure. He is still making waves in the Senate by lashing out at corporate bosses in hearings.

And his brand of populism includes punching back at deranged and dangerous conspiracy theories. 

For that reason, Sanders is to be celebrated as the other old guy keeping Democrats on the road to 2024 victory.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.