Can you really fight populism with populism?

Liberals are fed up. Although the people on the left tend to blame President Donald Trump and Elon Musk for the downward spiral of America, many even lifelong voters are frustrated with a democratic party who consider them as complacent. This was from the rally “Fighting Oligarchy” on Saturday in the city center of Los Angeles, where an estimated 36,000 people to Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York emerged to attack apathy and especially if this took part in Timidemocrats.

“This is not just about the Republican attacks on working people, La; we need a democratic party that is also fighting for us harder,” said Ocasio-Cortez of the crowd. “I want you to deal with every ambestance and support Democrats who are actually fighting because these are those that Republicans can actually defeat.”

Sanders and AOC are on the very long list of liberal politicians who are hellishly crazy, but on the very short list of those who will no longer take it. One and a half years before the intermediate elections, the couple crossed the country and tries to steer their anger into productive populism. They were in Utah yesterday and are supposed to swing through Idaho, Montana and North California this week.

In many ways, the Fighting Oligarchy Tour is a continuation of Sanders’ first presidential campaign. He does not position himself as one of the few elected within the Beltway, but as one of many Americans who arise against the creeping authoritarianism. For Sanders and AOC, this means defending themselves against Trump and Musk and realizing that many prominent democrats maintain the system that enabled Trump’s rise to power. The duo offers the voters a place where they gather a little less helpless, scream and feel a little less helpless, if only for one day.

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According to a spokesman, the rally on Saturday was the greatest of all times as his events of the presidential campaign in 2016 and 2020. If a primary emotion prevailed, it was anger that normally failed last autumn by the former vice president Kamala Harris. Harris lives about half an hour from the Rallye site with her husband Doug Emhoff in wealthy Brentwood. According to reports, she is considering a run for the Californian governor, but on Saturday she was nowhere in sight. There was also every trace of the youngest leader of the party, the former President Joe Biden, apart from the resumption of the anti-bideme “Let’s Go Brandon”-a slogan on a T-shirt with reading, with reading, with reading a slogan on a T-shirt that read, that read, Foxtrot Delta TangoCode for “Fuck Donald Trump”.

If you followed the trace of floppy sun hats, which made the hill down from Walt Disney Concert Hall in the direction of Grand Park, where the rally took place, they would be anti-fascism banner, Gen-Zers-Hewking-Communist newspapers, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, pro-Cuban activists and various calls for revolutionary actions Exist tinny megaphones. You could buy black-and-white-printed shirts with the words Anger against the machine surrounds Sander’s face. Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer, whom many experts swam as the left to Joe Rogan, was one of the influencers in the park to publish selfies and strengthen the event for his followers. (A whole section “New Media” was shown for content manufacturers.) The day had an anti -consultant ethos: nothing slick, nothing polished, not to mention anything subtly. Near the metal detectors, several activists built a huge photo illustration of Trump in a Klan engine hood with a Hitler mustache under block text. My trump card.

The now 83 -year -old Sanders has mastered the 1 percent for years –Bill ion air!– But his rhetoric has never been more resonant. Although the roadshow of the Fighting Oligarchy has the trap of a presidential campaign, production on Saturday was closer to a music festival. Maggie Rogers, one of Sanders’ opening files, called the La event “Berniechella”. (Later on this day, Sanders surprisingly performed at the Coachella Festival for a few hours.) Another warm -up, Joan Baez, joked that Sanders’ meeting “had a much more meaningful goal in Woodstock”. The musical headliner Neil Young blew his harmonica, played distorted riffs on the E guitar and, when he played an expanded reproduction of his hits “Rockin ‘in the Free World”, the crowd back in Chants of “Take America back!” The afternoon tried to channel the activism of the 1960s to channel-die, Martin Luther King Jr.s “I have a dream” speech-and the musical nostalgia was temporarily stubborn. But instead of looking back on some Golden Age presented, the topic of the day was about fighting for America’s small.D Democratic future and autocracy back. All of this, mind you, with fun.

“We will make our revolution happy,” said Sanders.

The Harris campaign had tried a similar strategy against Trump, which Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and other celebrities (including Rogers) were released at Rallyes. But these events were more brilliant and dygienized. Last summer and autumn I saw Harris campaign in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, and none of these meetings had the stream of the fighting oligarchy tour. Sanders, more than any of his allies in the Democratic Party, found out authentic populism – perhaps because he has sent the same message for so many decades. When he entered the stage, a gospel choir sang “makes people”. After a “Ber-Nie!” Chant broke out, he quickly corrected the audience: “Not ‘Bernie’, you are!”

Countless in 2024 Postmortems have argued that the Democrats have lost voters through Trumpism because they have become the party of elites who have lost contact with regular Americans who have the feeling that they have little participation in the system. Perhaps Sanders, an independent one who crouches with Democrats, connects with supporters of the base because they trust that he really believes what he says. His topics of conversation do not come from a focus group. But it is also easier, one of the few guides who meet the emptiness of the opposition. “Your present presence here is that Donald Trump and Elon Muschus are very nervous,” said Sanders of the crowd. He mocked through the picture of the three richest Americans – Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – behind the president when he was inaugurated in January. These three technical titans, Sanders reminded everyone, have more prosperity than the lower half of society, around 170 million people.

“When we talk about oligarchy, it is not just economy. I trust that you all know that you can live under a corrupt campaign financial system that can buy billionaire elections,” said Sanders. “Do not tell me about democracy if Musk itself can be rewarded 270 million US dollars for the choice of Donald Trump and then the most important position in the government. But it’s not only musk and republicans. It is also the Democratic Party. Your billionaire say candidates,” it was not the powerful special interests “and many democrats also listen.”

Sanders would be 87 in 2028 – almost too old to run for the president a third time. Many see Ocasio-Cortez, 35, as a natural heritage of his movement. Before she was elected to the congress, she worked on Sander’s first presidential campaign. AOC now acts as a partner at the Fighting Oligarchy Tour and has its own cult supporters: When she spoke, a quiet fell over the crowd. One participant wore a homemade replica of Ocasio-Cortez ‘notorious Met Gala dress with the expression Tax the rich Attached backwards. Like Sanders, the congress member leaned heavily into populism. “It will always be the people to comply with the masses that refuse to comply with authoritarian regime who are the last and strongest defense in our country and our freedom,” she said. And like Sanders, she lamed the role of money in politics. She called Trump the “logical, inevitable conclusion of an American political system that was dominated by companies and dark money”, and spoke of the shock she felt and learned when she was committed to special interests. “This movement is not about partisan fabric or purity tests,” she said. “But it’s about classes of solidarity.”

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In my conversations with the participants all day, I asked the people to articulate the most important emotions they felt throughout 2025. “Frustration,” said 62-year-old Scott Logan, “that no reins to the government, within the Senate and the house to be brought to Trump is my problem.” Logan’s wife, Bonnie Mcfarline, said chosen officials don’t do their job. “They are cowards,” she said all of them. Sasha Treadup, a 37-year-old from San Diego, who was dressed in a Liberty costume, told me that she had come to the event and at the latest “Hands Off!” Participated! Protests Day to combat your own feelings of resignation. She was fed up with the Democratic Party after Chuck Schumer Chuck Schumer had supported the Senate Minister of Minister of a Republican plan to deviate a state closure. “I’ll choose third parties this time,” said Treeadup. “I have the feeling that the two-party system simply doesn’t represent my values ​​anymore. It doesn’t have it for a long time.”

Democrats in the whole country are forced to deal with reality that millions of working Americans, who once viewed them as a natural basis, have lost confidence in the party. Sanders may be approaching the end of his career, but Ocasio-Cortez seems to be getting into her heyday. Many links already hope that she is running for President or at least a challenge for Schumer for his headquarters in the Senate. What Sanders and AOC address is that people want a vehicle for their trouble – something that Trump and RFK Jr. have effectively exploited in the last cycle. Above all, they want leaders who spoke bluntly. “Donald Trump is a criminal,” said Ocasio-Cortez.