Bernie and AOC

Something is happening out there

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The packed house of 7,500 cheered wildly as Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, told the audience to prepare to stage a general strike to stop the abuses of the Trump administration.

It was not a particularly surprising reaction for a union meeting. But this was not a union meeting. Nelson was introducing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders at a stop on their national Fighting Oligarchy tour.

And she was speaking in Missoula, Montana.

Over the past few days, Bernie and AOC have been drawing boisterous crowds that in size and intensity rival or exceed what we might see in the last days of a presidential campaign.

What makes this reaction remarkable is there is no presidential campaign, or political campaign of any sort.

What makes it especially remarkable is where it’s happening. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are taking their message of economic solidarity deep into red territory, and deep red territory is responding.

20,000 people in Salt Lake City.

30,000 people in a Republican district outside Sacramento.

12,500 people in Nampa, Idaho.

That’s Nampa, Idaho. In a county where Trump won 72% of the vote five months ago.

Normally, you would be lucky to get a few dozen people to attend a political rally in April of an odd-numbered year. But Bernie Sanders is drawing the largest crowds of his career—and he ran for president twice.

When Sanders began his tour in February, he booked theaters and expected to speak to groups numbering in the hundreds. But thousands showed up to hear him, first in Omaha, then in Iowa City. Soon he was booking arenas, and when arenas couldn’t hold the crowds he began moving his rallies outdoors.

Clearly something unusual is happening. Let’s try to figure out what it is by looking at the context in which it is occurring.