Trump and Sanders: two populist visions.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Donald Trump - Bernie Sanders - Column

The day after a Donald Trump supporter pepper-sprayed a fifteen-year-old protester outside a Trump rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, people lined up around the block in the rain to see Bernie Sanders at the Orpheum Theater in Madison.

The atmosphere at the two events could not have been more different.

A friendly looking man strummed an acoustic guitar as the Bernie supporters waited patiently in line. "You don't like what you earn?" he crooned, "Come on and feel the Bern!"

There were no clashes with protesters or calls to violence at the Sanders event.

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"I do not believe the American people will ever elect a President who every day is insulting one group of people or another," Sanders declared in Wisconsin, where he defeated Hillary Clinton in the April 5 primary. (Ted Cruz also pulled off a victory over Donald Trump in the state, with the help of Governor Scott Walker, powerful rightwing radio hosts in the Milwaukee area, and the rest of the Republican establishment, which hopes to knock off Trump in a contested national convention.)

While the people of the United States grapple with serious problems, Sanders added, the Republicans are behaving like clowns. "What these guys are doing is attacking each other's wives. It's beyond belief."

But at the Trump rally in Janesville, the crowd ate up Trump's attacks--on Cruz, Walker, House Speaker Paul Ryan, a hometown boy in Janesville--on his opponents who supported NAFTA and the TPP, and on the whole Republican establishment.

Of Walker, Trump said, "He's not doing a good job." He cited high unemployment, a growing budget deficit, and a "middle class hit very, very hard due to loss of manufacturing jobs."

Plus, although Walker likes to ride a Harley, "he does not look like a motorcycle guy, I'm sorry.... The motor cycle guys like Trump!"

Trump's taboo-breaking rants found a welcoming audience in Wisconsin--even as he began to sound like he was running for wife-beater-in-chief, defending his campaign manager's assault on a reporter, and then walking back his suggestion to Chris Matthews that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, women who seek abortions should be "punished."

Cruz succeeded in pushing Trump back in Wisconsin, but Trump's fan base among working-class voters across the nation is growing too big to overcome. Barring a convention coup, it might carry him all the way to the nomination.

"Trump's appeal is to economically stressed people," says Wisconsin...