Fear and hope are drawing Democrats to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez

NAMPA, Idaho – Making her way through the crowd at the cavernous Ford Idaho Center to see Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week, 31-year-old Kelsey Gowing confessed she had at first doubted she could persuade anyone to come with her in this deep-red state.

The first few months of the Trump administration have felt increasingly isolating to the stay-at-home mom of two. She is alarmed by the cuts to federal education programs and disturbed by the increasing boldness she sees from people who are “just outright hateful to anybody different than them.”

“It feels like every day is a new horror show,” Gowing said. She is surrounded by other moms and family members “who don’t think like I do,” she said. “That can be really lonely.”

But now in the arena, she and 34-year-old Ariel Olvera – whom Gowing introduced as one of her “two liberal friends” – were thrilled to see people filling the seats for Sanders, I-Vt., and Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in a state Donald Trump won by more than 30 percentage points. Olvera, cradling her infant in protective earmuffs, said she was ready “to hear a plan so we can fight this craziness.”

Since Sanders launched his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in March, his crowds have been building, and the events have captured the sweep of Democrats’ emotions. At first, it was shock and frustration. Then anger at the Democratic Party’s ineffective responses to Trump. Now there is rising fear that the nation is descending toward authoritarianism as well as a hunger for connection with others who feel that the president is turning their country into something they no longer recognize.

“I think people are actually really afraid,” said Krista Hays, a 58-year-old restaurant manager from Boise who described herself as a longtime independent who grew up in a “redneck town in northern Idaho.”

“The fabric of everything we’ve known is being dismantled before us, and nobody seems to be doing much about it, she said.”

Though she supported Sanders’ past presidential runs, Hays is quick to note she didn’t come to the rally “for politics.”

“I’m here to hear someone speak the truth,” she said, “and to be with my community.”

That desire for connection – and the sense that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are creating it – came up in dozens of interviews this past week as the independent senator and Democratic congresswoman made their way across the West, from a rally of an estimated 36,000 people in Los Angeles to unexpectedly large gatherings in the redder terrain of Utah, Idaho and Montana.

Taking the stage in Idaho, Ocasio-Cortez said she’d heard talking heads on TV questioning why she and Sanders would go to a red state like Idaho. “I’ll give you one simple answer: Because you matter,” she told the crowd to thunderous applause.

“We don’t accept this blue state, red state nonsense,” Sanders said moments later. “We are one people.”

The pulsing energy of the crowds for Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez in a noncampaign year has no obvious precedent in recent history. Sanders – who unsuccessfully vied for the Democratic presidential nomination twice – is not seen as a likely White House contender again at the age of 83. While Ocasio-Cortez, 35, is often viewed as his successor, she has several political paths open to her that could foreclose a near-term run for the White House. But at a time when there is no clear leader of the Trump opposition, their pairing is so far the closest thing to it on the left.

Many rallygoers said Sanders’ longtime message about the corrupting influence of money in politics has taken on new resonance as they watch Trump’s transactional style play out in the Oval Office. But at a deeper level, attendees almost universally described Sanders as a steadying force for democratic values – a kind of ballast amid the tumult of Trump’s mass firings, plummeting financial markets, and reports of immigrants being swept off the street and out of the country.

Amid “the complete destruction of democracy,” said Emily W., a 31-year-old Boise teacher, Sanders stands apart as a trusted figure who has been consistent and unchanging.

“I know very few people, including myself, that can resonate wholly with the Democratic Party right now,” said Emily, who spoke on the condition that The Washington Post use only her first name and last initial because she feared she could lose her job. “You can feel the lack of connection in the party – like there’s no glue. Lots of passionate individuals, but that through line is missing.”

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, by contrast, are meeting the “desire for community and connection,” she said. “People are wanting to see that they aren’t alone in this fight.”

Nancy Levy, a 66-year-old Long Beach Democrat, described that same sense of rising fear as she left the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez event in Los Angeles on Saturday.

“I think this is the only way we’re going to be able to defeat what’s happening in the country,” she said.

The size of the crowds is important, Levy said, because they make people feel like they are part of something bigger: “It tells our Democratic senators and House members that there’s a lot of people that don’t like what’s happening and we’ll back them. And it shows the other side that we’re out here and we’re not just going to give up.”

Fritzi Gragg, a 57-year-old teacher from Orange County, came to the L.A. rally looking for inspiration: “We need motivation. I feel like Democrats have gotten out of the gate too slow, and this is the initial part of getting everybody revved up and ready to go protest.”

Gragg said she and her husband were still reeling from the market turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs, which had led to $350,000 in losses in their retirement accounts over the past month. “It’s important to be with like-minded people, especially when times are really dark right now.”

Brittany King, a 26-year-old PhD student, felt that same draw to be among people who are feeling the anxieties she does – attending the lawmakers’ rally in Missoula, Montana, looking “for some hope,” she said.

“I feel like a lot of people are really scared, especially in academia,” she said. “Our funding is being threatened; our diversity efforts are being threatened by the Trump administration. I feel a lot of hope seeing people here that are also scared and also want to see some move towards a more positive future.”

The senator said he senses the fear and anxiety that is rippling through his crowds.

“You can’t pick up the paper, watch TV, and not be frightened about the very rapid movement of Trump’s authoritarianism,” Sanders said in an interview, tilting back in a chair in a dim basement office next to the locker rooms of the Idaho arena after the rally this week. “His disrespect in this regard for the Constitution; his having his agents pick people up off the street, throw them into unmarked vans, take them to the detention centers. It’s hard to believe that that is happening here in the United States today.”

But, “when you have turnouts like we have had – which are really unbelievably large – I think people are now ready to fight back.”

Both he and Ocasio-Cortez tell their crowds that the answer to the angst and sense of powerlessness is to build a “working class movement” to fight Trump, united by “class solidarity.” The congresswoman tells her audiences that they are connected by the shared “frustration and the heartbreak that comes from watching those in power actively tear down or refuse to fight for everyday working Americans like us.”

Charlie Burzynski, 21, a University of Montana student, said that he’s been “jaded” and doesn’t have “much trust” in politicians but that Sanders is “pretty much like the gold standard of what I think a politician should be and what they should stand for.”

He said part of the reason Trump won in 2024 was because so many young men weren’t inspired by the Democrats or their message. “Bernie, he inspires people and he gets them actually motivated and he kind of gives us a sense of purpose,” Burzynski said.

Amid the rallies, Sanders and his team are hiring organizers across the country. He is trying to recruit Democratic and independent candidates for all manner of federal, state and local races. And he plans to roll out a first slate of endorsements – for offices that will ultimately range from school board seats to the U.S. Senate, he said – “in the near future.”

As the 2026 midterm contests take shape in the coming months, his objectives could collide with those of centrist Democratic leaders, who say the party needs to field more moderate candidates in competitive races to recoup recent losses.

Sanders rejects that logic. “It’s proven to be a failure,” he said, pointing to how Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigned with Republicans such as former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney during the 2024 cycle and still lost.

When asked about the worries among some Democrats that his backing of liberal candidates could upend competitive races in 2026, a flash of defiance flickers across his eyes.

“I think the Democratic establishment should come here to Idaho, and hold their own rallies. Let’s see how many people they can bring out. Let’s see what a great job they have done here in Idaho, in West Virginia, or in a dozen other states where the Democratic Party virtually does not exist.”

For now, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are drawing voters of all ages and large numbers of Americans who say they haven’t felt at ease in either party. Among them was Izzy Kronz, a 23-year-old IT specialist from Boise who said watching the Trump administration’s moves in Washington has left her with a profound sense of sadness.

She was a Republican until 2021, she said, but became an admirer of Sanders. “I feel like he’s everyone’s grandpa in a way,” she said.

“I love his pairing with AOC; I think it’s such a dynamic duo,” Kronz said. “You see a foundation – he is kind of a firm pillar, a grounding point, and she takes the swings out and represents younger people and doesn’t pull punches.”

“I feel like my own problems are actually being heard and then spoken about,” she said.

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Dylan Wells in Missoula, Montana, contributed to this report.