Gamers Rejoice: Bernie Sanders Now Has A Twitch Account

Senator Bernie Sanders Image by Getty/SAUL LOEB/Contributor
As any 2020 presidential contender might tell you, the youth vote is important. Which explains why Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, hot off announcing a plan to cancel $1.6 trillion of student debt, is planning a series of videos to be streamed on Twitch, a tremendously popular live-streaming platform that caters to gamers and is known for its viewable playthroughs of popular games like “Pokémon” and “Fortnite.”
It’s safe to say that Sanders, the oldest candidate in the Democratic race at 77, is not Twitch’s target user. And it doesn’t look like he’ll be playing many games on his new platform.
The verified Bernie_Sanders Twitch channel does not currently have any videos uploaded. According to Recode, it is set to launch on June 27 with commentary before and after that evening’s round of Democratic debates, for which Sanders is one of the debaters. (Given the number of Democratic candidates, the field has been split in two for the first round of debates; the first will be on June 26.)
Twitch is just one of a slew of streaming services that the Sanders team plans to use for its rollout of planned “Bernie TV” segments, in which the candidate will discuss the day’s news and the campaign’s progress with his staffers. Bernie TV will also run on YouTube and Facebook Live.
Sanders isn’t the first presidential hopeful to secure a spot on Twitch. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a self-described geek, launched his own channel last July.
“We’re moving toward doing a lot more live content on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, tapping into an audience where there’s not a lot of political content already,” Josh Miller-Lewis, the digital communications director for the Sanders campaign, told Recode, emphasizing that the video content is meant to highlight the spirit of Sanders’s campaign slogan, “Not me. Us.”
Sanders’s new video game adjacency has some precedent. In 2016, a role-playing game about his exploits in the last presidential election, “Bernie’s Journey,” sought funding on Kickstarter. In April of that same year, a Vice report speculated that video game culture created the so-called “Bernie Bros” faction of the senator’s base. The candidate’s most recent comments on gaming came on June 18, when Sanders tweeted his support for unionizing video game workers.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.