What Music Fans Can Teach Progressive Politicians

When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders step on stage during their progressive populism tour, the energy in the air is unmistakable. Their power to summon crowds, to animate disillusioned young people, to make ideals feel urgent and alive—that’s real. They have become the clearest inheritors of a tradition that believes in oratory as a tool of movement-building. And the crowds are listening. They chant, they cheer, they march.

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But then they go home.