You hear this idea sometimes:
Don't waste a crisis.
That might mean some very different things, more than just the first bullet point below:
- Building a coalition committed to kicking out the bums and getting America back to what it was in, say, 2014.
- Same coalition, aimed at ejecting the dangerous ones and getting America back to what it was in 2014, with some new patches applied on the system flaws revealed by the current crisis.
- Building a coalition wider than we've seen in recent decades, committing to the needs of the new people joining in (people alienated or left out in recent decades) and patching the American system, for sure, but also expanding on the best parts. New protections to the system, new opportunities for citizens, new rights in place — after all, why should alienated people help restore the kind of America that alienated them in the first place?
Seems likely that Bernie Sanders is trying not to waste this crisis in this larger sense, and people are turning out to his rallies in larger and larger numbers.