They’re going to Republicans and independents and explaining in these rallies that there’s an oligarchy that has taken control, made them poorer, and it will get worse.
I doubt Republicans are attending these rallies; good chance most of the people attending are blue-leaning voters (which exist everywhere in the same way red-leaning voters exist in California).
If they can convince enough people of the real causes, they have a broader base, and potentially even some new progressives.
That’s true, but the problem is twofold here: First, without strong leadership willing to take to the streets all this messaging will never lead to action. Messaging is important, but it’s not everything. Second, America is going fascist at breakneck speed and doesn’t have the time for progressives slowly build up a base of support. This is a time of crisis, and both the Squad specifically and the American progressive movement in general are letting a good crisis go to waste (which incidentally is not how you solve a crisis). Everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan is acutely aware that something needs to be done, and many want someone to give them something to do. Bernie simply doesn’t give people anything to do—which even in the best of times this is a big problem with how he does things—but right now it’s downright suicidal.
Edit: Typo.
Drum up support for protests, boycotts, strikes and other forms of resistance. They—or anyone else trying to lead the American progressive movement now—have to understand that they’re leading a resistance movement, not a political movement. The battlefield ceased to be Washington in January; now it’s the hearts and minds of people and, most importantly, the streets. Bernie, if he’s interested leading the movement (which I doubt), should be linking up with local and state-level progressive movements and cooperating with them to organize a nationwide resistance effort, not try to pour progressive energy into a system that has already failed them. This resistance effort can then be reorganized into a third party and knock the democrats out of the competition with the legitimacy it’ll gain from being the resistance that toppled Trump’s regime. This is a time where the GOP is only concerned with their third of the population and the DNC has almost completely lost legitimacy in the eyes of the other two thirds; there is no reason to operate within the system. If the GOP plays a “good game of chess”, then the progressive movement should take a sledgehammer to the chess board.