SO DO REPUBLICANS: Democrats welcome Bernie takeover.

Democrats previously reticent to welcoming Sen. Bernie Sanders into their fold are coming around.

More than a dozen Democrats interviewed by The Hill say the Vermont Independent has become a powerful and welcome voice for a party struggling to find its identity after a devastating defeat in 2016.

While misgivings remain about giving too much leadership to a politician who technically isn’t a Democrat, a clear warming trend is on the rise.

“It continues to drive me a bit nuts that he continues to register as an Independent, but the bottom line is that he is a good Democrat,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primary and openly worried then about Sanders’s allegiances to the party.

During the primary, some Democrats worried that Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, was pushing the party too far to the left.

Sanders doesn’t have to become a Democrat, because the Democrats have joined him as Socialists.