Bernie Sanders Is Tapping Into a Deep Vein of Anger in America

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.