Taking It to the People

Bernie Sanders grasps this perilous moment and the need for collective power

“Despair is not an option…the stakes are just too high,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said Saturday in L.A. (Photo by Mario Tama via Getty Images)

There’s a lot to appreciate about 83-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders these days. After several months of “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders spoke to an estimated 36,000 people in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon, then showed up at the Coachella music festival later that night. He had come to deliver a warning and a request from the youthful crowd of music lovers.

“This country faces some very difficult challenges, and the future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation,” Sanders said to the massive audience, appearing on stage with Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress at 28. “Now you can turn away and ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do so at your own peril. We need you to stand up and fight for justice, to fight for economic justice, social justice and racial justice.”

At a perilous time when we need democracy advocates to fuel the public’s commitment to engage politically and confront the hostile Trump regime, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are modeling what it means to take it to the people. We’ve also seen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other Democrats like Florida’s Frost and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy holding town halls in red districts. These are important motivating events as we look ahead to millions and millions of Americans—young and old—taking to the streets to increase pressure against the Trump regime.

“I’m a catalyst to provide them a megaphone to lift up their voice. And I think that’s what people are looking for,” Walz said last month when he started his outreach. “I understand now my responsibility.”

Of course, Trump’s hostile attacks against the American economy, our system of justice and due process, alliances around the world, and every American trying to get by or get ahead is also fueling the intensifying anger and discontent.

From April 8-11, CBS News surveyed 2,410 Republican and Democratic Americans. The results, published yesterday, showed that 59 percent of the respondents rated the U.S. economy as either fairly bad or very bad and the majority (53 percent) said they think the economy is getting worse. In addition, 58 percent opposed Trump’s tariffs on imported goods.

The survey also found that 49 percent said Trump’s policies were making them worse off financially and just 44 percent approved of his handling of the economy, down 4 percent from two weeks earlier. (This after a majority believed that he was better for the economy than Kamala Harris.) His overall approval rating dropped to 47 percent, down from 50 percent in March and 53 percent in February.

I’m always reluctant to put too much trust in polls—to believe we can overcome this cruel regime with the help of souring ratings. We know there’s about a third of the country who comprise the Trump cult who would cheer him on if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight on live television. This immunized, sadistic narcissist believes he can do anything he wants—anything—and bad ratings won’t stop him from pursuing total power and further enriching himself and his billionaire buddies.

I worry that even as our economy grows worse as prices rise, supply chains are broken, China and other nations retaliate with new tariffs and sell off treasury bonds that they hold into the trillions, Trump will still refuse to change course and even double down on his deeply failing actions. Even as everyday Americans increasingly struggle to pay their bills and secure the health and safety of their families, the deluded Trump will continue to insist that he is winning as the losses multiply.

On Friday, after a week when working people saw their retirement savings slip away and market investors watched trillions disappear for no good reason, the mad hatter wrote this on his Truth Social platform: “We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly.” In his deranged mind, a market collapse is a win, allies turning hostile is exciting, up is down and wrong is right.

That’s why public pressure will become increasingly critical to convince those around him that they have to speak up. That won’t be easy, given his success—with the GOP-led Senate’s acquiescence—at surrounding himself with extreme sycophants and incompetent miscreants dedicated to serving him rather than the country or the Constitution.

As Sander told tens of thousands in downtown L.A. Saturday, this is a moment of “extraordinary danger.” Trump is moving America “rapidly toward an authoritarian society,” one in which “a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of our country.”

Ocasio-Cortez put it like this: “The feeling of the water rising up to our throats, the impossibility to afford anything easily, the fear of speaking up, the deeply bitter and toxic division driven more by algorithms on social media than individual thought, the crumbling of our rights and protections—understand that all of this is what it means and what it feels like to be governed by billionaires.”

But “despair is not an option,” Sanders concluded. “Giving up and hiding under the covers is not acceptable. The stakes are just too high.”

Sanders is right: This is not a time to turn away or downplay the peril. The more Americans grasp the urgency, demand bravery from their leaders and recognize their collective power, the sooner we can begin to shift the trajectory of this America-hating regime. The question is how much unnecessary economic pain it will take before enough Americans decide they’ve had enough.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $50 a year or just $5 a month, if you’re not already. This helps sustain and expand the work of America, America, keeps nearly all the content free for everyone and gives you full access to the comment sections. Building our community has never been more important.