Megan K. Stack writes:

They gathered early in North Las Vegas, waiting under the hot sun in a snaking line in the middle of a workday for their chance to see Bernie.

With stucco houses and apartment blocks interrupted by strip malls and trash-strewn vacant lots, this is not the Vegas you see in glamorous movies. It was, however, the setting for what Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called the biggest crowd he had ever drawn here. Nevada was the first Southwestern stop for Mr. Sanders who, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had set out on what the pair dubbed the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

Packing venues all over the country — in Nebraska, Iowa, Arizona and Colorado — Mr. Sanders appears more popular than ever. His core message hasn’t changed in decades, but it’s hitting harder now. In hours of interviews with all kinds of people at the Nevada rally on Thursday, two unbroken trends emerged: Everyone I met was having money problems. And all of them were frightened, some for the first time, that the country they’d always counted on was sliding away because of President Trump.

If these conversations are any measure, many Americans are reaching a breaking point. Already struggling to make ends meet, people are wondering how much leaner things could get if a recession hits. They see Mr. Trump defy the Constitution and ravage parts of the federal government that have long seemed as unremarkable and permanent as boulders — and they fear that, before all is said and done, he’ll come for Medicaid, public schools, veterans’ services and Social Security, too. Maybe take our freedom of speech, while he’s at it.

It was all there at the Bernie rally: Dread, yes, but also an anger and appetite — a tremendous, largely untapped political energy looking, it seemed, for an outlet.

“I just got the worst of fears,” a recently retired sheet metal worker named Kelly Press told me. “You get up in the morning, you don’t know what you’re gonna go to bed losing.”

Mr. Press, a strapping 65-year-old from Detroit who spent his working years bouncing around construction sites in the Western states, wore a cap from his union (Sheet Metal Workers Local 88), a chunky ring on each hand, and dark glasses shading his blue eyes. Moving to Vegas inspired him, at one point, to work as a craps dealer, which gave him a lingering aversion to the cruelties of gambling and sent him scuttling back to the comparatively placid world of construction sites.

If someone got on the stage that very day, he told me, and asked the crowd to march all the way to Washington to protest against Mr. Trump, Mr. Press would take that long walk without hesitation — “I swear to God.”

“But there’s nobody like that,” he said. “There’s nobody giving anybody any kind of direction. I think everybody is really scared and lost.” [Continue reading…]

Politico reports:

A major liberal group is warning Democratic leaders that they have deep problems with their base when it comes to their strategy toward President Donald Trump.

The progressive organization MoveOn said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that its members are irate over what they see as inaction from Democratic lawmakers in Congress. The memo, which was first shared with POLITICO, cautioned that grassroots volunteers and donors will stop helping the Democratic Party if it doesn’t do more to obstruct Trump.

“These members, arguably the backbone of the party, have reached a unifying consensus since President Trump’s inauguration,” wrote Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn. “Whether they live in a deep-red, purple, or blue district, their message is clear: Now is not the time for politics as usual. Don’t back down, fight back.” [Continue reading…]