On most days, if you asked me what I would do if I was given a time machine that allowed me to travel back in time to the 1960’s, I’d tell you that I’d go see Jimi Hendrix light his guitar on fire at the Monterrey Pop Festival or watch Sandy Koufax pitch or Mickey Mantle hit. There are a lot of things I wish I could have seen in person.
Only with more reflection might I get it in my head to try to change history somehow, like the protagonist in Stephen King’s novel 11/22/63 who tries to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy.
What I wouldn’t do is go to a town hall meeting to confront my congressman about the Vietnam War or join in some vigil in front of the Pentagon. It’s not that those things are unworthy. I joined a protest outside my congressman’s local office just three weeks ago. But they are still small ball.
If that all The Resistance amounts to, it doesn’t amount to much.
That’s why I think Jonathan Chait overstates the case:
It is worth noting that, so far, normal political countermobilization seems to be working quite well. “The Resistance,” as anti-Trump activists have come to be known, has already rattled the once-complacent Republican majorities in Congress, which Trump needs to quash investigations of his corruption and opaque ties to Russia. Whatever pressure Trump has tried to apply to the news media has backfired spectacularly. His sneering contempt has inspired a wave of subscriptions that have driven new revenue to national media, which have blanketed the administration with independent coverage. Popular culture outlets, rather than responding to Trump’s election by tempering their mockery, have instead stepped it up, enraging the president.
As I have tried to make clear in two recent posts, I don’t think it’s really possible to rattle the Republican majorities because they are too ensconced in power to have a need to worry about accountability. Maybe some congresspeople are avoiding town halls that are guaranteed to do them more harm than good, but that doesn’t mean that more than a handful of them are actually more worried about getting beaten by Democrats than by primary challengers from their right.
And the press may not be going docile on Trump, but that doesn’t mean that their reporting is more effective now than it was during the campaign.
As for popular culture, we saw what that was worth on November 8th.
I don’t want to discourage anyone from their efforts to resist, but I also don’t want people to think that what’s being done so far is “working quite well.” It’s not.
What’s working more than anything is what Trump and his team are doing and not doing. Their incompetence and overreach are limiting their effectiveness and creating divisions on the right. Aside from modestly effective obstruction by Senate Democrats, the only thing slowing down Trump and the congressional Republicans is their radicalism combined with their amateurish grasp of how to use the tools they now own.
They will start to figure these things out. They’ll get their people in place. And they’ll begin to really hammer and disempower their political enemies.
Keeping them divided and fighting among themselves is the best strategy for now, but the political resistance needs to be geographic in scope and focus. Local Democratic organizations that have been dormant for years need to lead this charge from below, but the messaging at the top needs to change, too.
Maybe a half century from now it will be easy to fantasize about what we should have done while we still had a chance to change history, but we should try to apply that kind of thinking now while our choices remain real.
Tyler Cowen at Bloomburg thinks there are recognizable parallels and has some uncomfortable predictions.
Industrial Revolution Comparisons Aren’t Comforting
Industrial Revolution Comparisons Aren’t Comforting
Thanks for this.
Expected numbers put out of work by automation are staggering. But the good news is this: they can take over all those openings created by deporting “illegals”. Right?
If Trump incompetence is what helps us the most, then Democrats should try to maximize that incompetence by allowing the worst Trump appointments to go through. It will hurt in the short run, but pay dividends in the long run.
I could not agree more.
Attacking Trump personally seems ineffective for reasons I do not entirely understand. Trump should not never have come close to the nomination. But here we are.
The only thing that really can be done is to tell the story of the victims in hopes of changing minds.
I think, perhaps simply, that attacking isn’t effective because it’s tribal, maybe with a large dose of apathy. Something more is needed.
My guess is if you ask Booman is that there is a pretty good market for the tribal attacks. They are needed – our side regards Trump as a moral abomination – and that gives energy to the opposition. I suspect people on our side very much reading pieces like that, and the traffic numbers prove it. But it hasn’t been and won’t be enough. At some point real victims are going to start to appear. I hope in god’s name that breaks through the tribal cocoon we all find ourselves in. Because absent that it is hard to… Read more »
A large part of Trump voters disliked both candidates according to the exit polls (they also disliked Clinton). I think finding out what they disliked and hammering on that could drive down Trumps support to his core supporters that actually like him.
36% liked Trump, 40% liked Clinton, 2% liked both.
Of the 18% who liked neither Trump got 47%, Clinton 30 and Johnson and Stein 19% (Johnson got a whopping 16%).
To your point that is the group to understand.
I recently saw a story on how the democrats flipped Harris county in Texas (Houston) which had been solidly republican before then. Now it was the non-white population that did it. But the question was why? They had been the majority before now. So what happened? The story goes that the smart dems had always thought they had to win the rural white vote to win. Then someone noted that many non white registered voters never voted and many more were not registered. So between 2009 and last November they set out to find out why and change it. So… Read more »
That doesnt solve the issue in states that dont have so many minorities like IA or WI and as it relates does little to push state legislatures and US House seats into play. So while I think it is a worthwhile effort in the end I think local approaches will have to varry to be successful.
Imagine what happens though if Texas flips? And it,isn’t saying we should abandon others, especially those near the bottom. This should be a fifty state everyone in effort.
“fixed the message” – Word!
Booman’s last two posts were too meta for me – too much strategy and not enough content. Shouldn’t we focus on making everyone’s lives better and then figuring out how to deliver this message?
Mixed feelings.
If Democrats succeed in making people’s lives more secure and prosperous, those prosperous people start thinking they are rich and start voting republican.
Well AP is handicapping DNC race to have Petez over Ellison (though neither enough to win) so I am not thrilled with confidence at the message at the top changing.
That said the resistance (boy do I hate that term) does seem to be the best bet for empowering local organizations.
Either Perez or Ellison would be dynamite. This is the very definition of a win/win situation.
My concern isn’t so much with Perez himself though I think he is a worse spokesman than Ellison (perhaps a Dem spokesman is needed, perhaps not) but a large chunk of the existing Dem structures specifically put up Perez because they didn’t want someone who supported Bernie. I do not like this because the existing Obama/Clinton axis has been responsible for a decade of disasters and paid no price. They are quite simply, losers. The Republicans gained this level of power when they broke their leadership, I have come to believe Democrats can only succeed when they do the same.… Read more »
Most of this, but also because Ellison was picked specifically because he could bridge the coalition together. That wasn’t enough. Perez was going to be DNC chair if Clinton won (according to Mike Allen, so grains and salt, but lines up imo). They demand control. Even in defeat.
I wanted Perez to be VP!
Are you suggesting that Perez shouldn’t have run? Or is only running to kneecap Sanders? All evidence suggests otherwise and his progressive cred is pretty solid.
I really don’t care who wins between these two as either one will be a vast improvement over the previous chair, but I really get pissed when people treat Perez like he’s some party hack, when he most definitely not.
There must be an enemy standing in the way of True Progress™. If Perez hadn’t run Schumer’s endorsement of Ellison would have proven his perfidy.
I give Ellison 6 months before the purity ponies discover he was a traitor to the cause all along.
The latter, obviously. Perez is a great candidate in and of himself. As stated below I wanted him to be the VP candidate. But he’s only there to keep the current power structure in place.
How so? Doesn’t he have any agency in this? And isn’t Schumer part of the current power structure?
How does a pro-free trade DNC chair help win the Midwest in 2018? The same party establishment is going to run things. The DNC War Room is going to be run by the Clinton person who ran the Clinton War Room. Both Perez and Ellison flew to David Brock’s fundraiser on the day the women’s march – Ellison was playing to win in Florida and he wind up siding with the establishment. I agree Ellison is more of a step in the right direction, though I personally thought Buttigieg in the end might be the best choice. In Iowa there… Read more »
The DNC chair won’t be running for shit in 2018, he’ll hopefully be employing the 50 state strategy and contesting every seat, in every district, in every state.
Do we ignore all Perez did as Labor Sec. and in the justice dept. because he supported TPP (which was the position of his boss)?
Why does his running for the seat have to be something sinister? Why can’t he just be a qualified dude who wants the job?
He represents the establishment: it was the Clinton people who were behind him getting in the race. I go back to the Brock event and the fact that both he and Ellison (and Ellison has hardly been pure in this race) went instead of going to the Women’s March speaks volumes about where they think the power in the Party resides. And that Party rests first and foremost with large dollar donors. This made the rounds of the Bernie people I know really fast: “Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez backpedaled late Wednesday after telling a group of Kansas lawmakers earlier… Read more »
Simultaneously these people argue “The DNC chair doesn’t matter and is a handless job” and “but pick Perez”.
Thankless*
Oh and: we promise to include you in important discussions about the Party’s future.
What they really mean is respond to our e-mails asking for money by giving, and do GOTV for us, and outside of that shut the fuck up.
I’m saying “pick either.” Both are solid.
Schumer is backing Ellison, ain’t no one more establishment than him.
Can someone please explain how the primary was “rigged” against Sanders to the tune of 4 million fewer votes.
So he supported his boss on TPP and everything else he’s done out the window? You’re willfully ignoring a lot of good work that he has done. His progressive bonafides are solid.
Should he not have run? Why not?
We don’t have to like each other to understand the real enemy ain’t Tom Perez or Keith Ellison. And treating either as such is stupid and counter-productive.
Can someone please explain how the primary was “rigged” against Sanders to the tune of 4 million fewer votes. You do realize that was PEREZ saying that? He was completely two faced about it. Front loading primaries (see Super Tuesday) is a way of making it harder for insurgents, who are not as well known, to win. The DNC also deliberately scheduled debates at times they would not be watched. Trying to pretend they didn’t have their thumbs on the scale is silly. It isn’t why Sanders lost. We lost because we lost Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri. Had we carried… Read more »
I was under the impression he lost because he got wiped out in the “Deep South.” No way he was winning Illinois, New York or Cali so the path to the nomination was the longest of shots. Not a fan of the caucus system myself, rather undemocratic I think, but if you add to his vote total, you have to add to hers too. The idea that Perez is to the right of Donald Trump on anything is laughable. And again, you seem willing to overlook the vast good Perez did for labor to ding him for supporting his boss’s… Read more »
You have not addressed the fact that Perez was completely two faced about it.
He LIED ABOUT IT.
“No way he was winning Illinois”
Sanders lost Illinois by less than 2%.
“Not a fan of the caucus system myself, rather undemocratic I think, but if you add to his vote total, you have to add to hers too.”
Nonsensical – missed the point completly.
“The idea that Perez is to the right of Donald Trump on anything is laughable.”
On free trade he is demonstrably so. It is not subject to debate.
Did you see Matt Stoller’s piece in the Intercept? How come this is not being discussed? He could not complete his work on time. Even The Bush cabinet was aware of the deadlines. He got the headlines, but never delivered.
And Eric Holder just announced his support. That is helpful…
Were we sooooo sure of victory?
Donald Trump’s trade position is right wing nativist bullshit.
that picking Ellison is telling Clinton people to get lost. After all he supported the losing candidate who called her a corporate sell out and who complained about the election being rigged. The losing candidate who was given unprecedented say over the platform and chose Cornel West to represent him on the platform committee, an insult to both Clinton and especially Obama
Then there are those of us who aren’t stupidly using this DNC chair race to re-litigate the primary and are looking at the candidates on their own merits.
The funny part is that Ellison isn’t going to be purging Clinton people and Perez isn’t going to be purging Sanders people. The dispute couldn’t possibly be more petty and stupid. They each have support from both factions. My preference is for Ellison but you need to be an obsessive grievance mongerer to see any significant difference between the capabilities of the two.
And since they’ve led us into disasters for their ENTIRE tenure, then hell yes they need to get lost. How about they sit down and shut up for a change?
Can the more progressive than thou wing of the party claim? Sanders couldn’t even get a Democratic governor elected in Vermont even though he campaigned hard for one. Single payer has gone down in flames twice on the state level. Progressive darlings like Zephyr Teachout and Russ Feingold lost by larger margins than Secretary clinton in this past election. Really though the point is that both Ellison and Perez should be judged on their own merits instead of people in both camps acting like children and using this to re-litigate the primary. And I say this as someone who is… Read more »
I disagree with this completely. There’s a reason Perez has the support of mostly ex-Obama and Clinton Officials while Ellison has mostly support among state party chairs, and people on the ground. Look maybe Ellison will fail but he is fresh blood and we know what the old blood has done, lose. They dont even want to acknowledge there is a problem that needs Dems to do much differently.
But I could accept Buttigieg easily.
Perez isn’t anymore “old blood” than Ellison. Ellison has been a congressman for a decade ffs.
Again, Perez is supported largely by the Clinton/Obama axis, the old blood. Ellison is not.
Because caucuses disenfranchise huge swaths of people. Way more than early registration deadlines (like NY’s) could ever do.
Want proof? Senator Sanders won the Washington state caucus but lost the primary “beauty contest.”
Frankly if making the primary fair is a key issue for you or anyone else the very first thing on your list should be to get rid of caucuses.
What? You justs aid the primary was a beauty contest. By definition that didn’t matter so you can’t use it as proof of anything.
“beauty contest” primary than participated in the caucuses. That tells me the primary, even though it didn’t count, was more representative of the electorate. Caucuses, by their very format, disenfranchise voters especially people who work hourly jobs, disabled voters, and single parents who don’t have options for childcare. All of those subsets of people include a high percentage of the party’s base – people of color, especially women of color. Like I said if primary fairness and openness is an issue you are passionate about getting rid of caucuses should be the first thing on your list. Of course,… Read more »
The electoral success of the Republicans depends in a large part to a populist message that is not supported by their governance. A perfect example of this is Trump campaigning on a pledge to “drain the swamp” and then stocking his cabinet with a bunch of billionaires and industry toadies. In the past, Republicans have been able to mostly minimize the damage caused by this type of hypocrisy using various strategies (mostly blaming Democrats…), but I think that gets harder to do the larger and more visible that opposition is and the more complete their current hold on power is.… Read more »
Astute observations here.
You are bringing up some things which speak to this gnawing discomfort I have that is roiling in my gut as to whether or not many of us are toiling in areas to no good end. Locally, there has been a core of people who have been making regular trips to the offices of our Republican representatives. They have been telling stories to staffers about the negative impact of repealing the ACA. They have been delivering petitions demanding public town hall meetings. They have been asking that they not simply be rubber stamps for Trump. This is all done in… Read more »
I think the dems need to get back to their base. Trump made a lot out of the few Carrier jobs in Indiana. And he keeps talking jobs, although thus far not much has happened. That base should be solidly democratic. It is not any longer. So the $15 an hour wage and ” free” education and health care has to be a priority. Personally the inequality message strikes me as a non starter and distracting. But that’s just me. We do not need to be enemies of Wall Street either. But there are priorities. We will need to take… Read more »
Working people are conditioned to think that “free stuff” is for beggars. You’ll get a better response from “fair stuff”.
What does “fair stuff” even mean?
“What is justice?” is a political question we haven’t asked with an open mind in a while.
The childhood notion of “fair” goes to an early-experienced sense of justice or early training in reciprocality. It is an idea engraved on our courts, our “temples of justice” (many architecturally pushing the theme).
A cynical age dismisses the ideas that restrain its avarice.
Perhaps conditioning people to think that those in difficult circumstances deserve to suffer is a problem.
I posted most of the below on BooMan’s previous Forget-It-We’re-Screwed-Stop-Dreaming post a few hours ago, but now he’s got this new one, which makes the same point (the difference being that his ire was rankled by a different analysis he just read). But the gist is the same. To be clear, we’re uprecedented disapproval ratings, record-low approval ratings, millions protesting around the world, more protests every day, the universal scorn and disgust of all news media, pundits etc. (excluding FOX etc. as usual), the immediate collapse of the immigrant ban, #TrumpRegrets, the press conferences, Flynn’s resignation, the constantly-developing Russia stories,… Read more »
They have the power. They will use it. There is little we can do before 2018 to stop them: and even then it would take a miracle for them not to pick up seats in the Senate and another to retake the house.
As long as the GOP base holds – and it is – the future is not bright despite what you list.
Have to agree. Think the defeat in 2016 is just a precursor to an even greater one in 2018. Trump isn’t up for election then, but the entire Dem leadership is: Pelosi, Sanders, Warren, all of them. And the average age of the Dem leadership in Congress by then will be close to 80, as opposed to 50 for the Repubs. It’s hard to believe that the disparity has grown so much, but apparently it has. Gonna be really hard for the Dems to overcome that, and appeal to younger voters.
I don’t think most people believe that things are cast in cement. But when he took that oath of office he was handed a massive set of tools and weapons which automatically give him a huge advantage. And the massive clusterfuck that has been the first four weeks of his tenure are clouding the fact that he simply does not understand this, and the legion of ignorant dumbasses he has surrounded himself with are so far only trying to figure out the best way for themselves to personally maximize the grift. If anyone finally realizes the extent of the power… Read more »
No. That’s what he thought he was doing with that flurry of Executive Orders: “I’m in charge; let’s get it all done!” But the orders were badly crafted and there’s the U. S. Constitution and the rest of the government (which he truly seems to have no concept of)…and the momentum was gone. There’s no staff; no-one in the second- and third-tier positions at the departments; there’s no (for example) infrastructure legislation on the table (as there was eight years ago when Obama had spent the transition working it up with those University of Chicago academics while doing everything else… Read more »
“But the orders were badly crafted and there’s the U. S. Constitution and the rest of the government (which he truly seems to have no concept of)…and the momentum was gone. There’s no staff; no-one in the second- and third-tier positions at the departments; there’s no (for example) infrastructure legislation on the table ….” All true, but you make it sound as if the problem was purely technical. There’s something else that’s even more important. Trump (and this has always been the case) is simply not as popular as he think she is. He came into office the least popular… Read more »
He’s also 70 and unhealthy. I still think making it to 2021 is a longshot for him.
I’m hoping we don’t have to wait that long.
Good analogies.
The resistance is not primarily to stop the Republicans now, although slowing them down can happen and time is limited. The point of a democratic resistance is to get people fired up to vote Dem in 2018, to influence the platform the Dems will take, and to encourage wobbly Congressional Dems to stand firm. That’s all the Tea Party did for the Republicans it 2009-2010. For all the screaming and near-riots, the 2009-20 House passed pretty much everything on the agenda, and the Senate was stopped only by the filibuster. AFAICT, it’s working pretty well. Trump’s 1/3 through the “100… Read more »
Spot on Curt. This is about building an energized community that makes republican’s lives at least a bit more unpleasant now and mobilizes for 2018 and 2020. There is plenty of evidence that this community is inspiring people to sign up to challenge republicans at the ballot box.
It is true that we cannot make the GOP go away or really stop much that they plan to do. But we can make them realize they will pay for it later.
I agree with Curt Adams. We are getting people engaged, and that is a necessary precursor to getting people out to vote in a midterm election in which Dems are usually outnumbered. We have also stiffened the spines of our Senators, who have in turn slowed confirmations to a crawl, which has in turn prevented the GOP from accomplishing anything. Furthermore, I would argue that in one respect the resistance has clearly been working: the ACA. There’s a reason Republicans are hemming and hawing and tamping down expectations and making contradictory statements about what they will or won’t do, and… Read more »
With all respect, Boo, you’re missing the main event.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-party-trump_us_58ac7f3ce4b0c4d5105717e0
Neera Tanden acting as PR for #TheResistance somehow creates cognitive dissonance.
She’s one of the best Dems around. One of Clinton’s best staff members. I know he isn’t “pure” enough for you and some other poster, but I don’t give a shit.
I guess the core of Democrats have not gotten the message. The DC game of highly-paid consultants, media folks, lobbyist-subsisidized political officials, and paid propaganda organs perpetuating the established ways of doing things what what the voters were repudiating. It would have worked but the system coughed up a con-man populist to bail it out. It was a Hail Mary, but it worked. The absurdity of the well-heeled losers of an election claiming they are the #Resistance has diminished the ability of grassroots people to actually resist the sorts of abuse of power that are already operating in neighborhoods. But… Read more »
“…What worked more than anything was what Reagan and his team did and didn’t do. Their incompetence and overreach limited their effectiveness and created divisions on the right. Aside from modestly effective obstruction by Senate Democrats, the only thing that slowed down Reagan and the congressional Republicans was their radicalism combined with their amateurish grasp of how to use the tools they now owned.
They started to figure those things out. They got their people in place. And they began to really hammer and disempower their political enemies….
“
There, I fixed it for you.
Anecdotal but a potential harbinger of good things to come: local Democratic Parties are finding themselves with an influx of new members. Even better, the newbies are relatively young. Mileage may vary from locality to locality, but that sort of involvement will go some way to regaining state legislatures if nothing else. Regaining seats on quorum courts and county commissions may not seem especially glamorous, nor are runs for town councils and school boards (some of those elections are nominally nonpartisan, but let’s get real – that’s not really what happens), but those are the very offices that have the… Read more »
I’m seeing a lot of new enthusiasm from 30 and 40 somethings here. We’ll be installing one of them as the new central committee secretary next month. I’m going nuts trying to coordinate info from all the new resistance organizations that have sprung up. One group calling themselves Call to Action gained over 1,000 members in just a couple of weeks and turnout for statehouse events has been amazing. Interesting that much of the energy seems to be coming from women who were either in Washington for the march or attended one locally.
We definitely have our share of resistance organizations springing up here, and ordinarily my home turf is considered hostile territory for anyone even remotely Democratic leaning. This last election was apparently enough of a wake-up call. Better late than never. Indivisible claims two chapters in each Congressional district. That’s something. Plus there are the offshoots from Pantsuit Nation, and so on. The main thing is that these folks are starting to show up not only at demonstrations or town hall meetings (if our Congresscritters can be bothered to show their faces in broad daylight), but at DP meetings in our… Read more »
So I guess Booman wouldn’t have joined MLK’s marches, the anti-war protests, the women’s rights protests in the 50s/60s because we know how useless those ended up being. /sarcasm
The Resistance is working well. Our lawyers stopped the Muslim ban in its tracks. Journalism exposed Flynn. Lots of mobilization for upcoming elections. We’re going to suffer many defeats but to poo-poo this as just some rowdy town halls with no real results is needless pessimism.
Why have the Democrats steadily lost state houses and state legislatures? The GOP is one state away from calling a constitutional convention!
The Obama years were particularly bad for the Democratic Party in the states. Yet, there seems to be not much focus or debate on this big issue.
Has been at the center of the DNC chair race. Every candidate has that as the cornerstone of their platform. The two leading contenders, Perez & Ellison, have discussed it extensively.
‘Resistance’? Against what exactly: the devil? Or is it ‘Pushback’, ‘Transformation’, whatever? Something like ‘I have a dream..’. Even better yet: a plan.
P.S. I’m all for letting off steam but once that’s happened all the energy has been expended without movement and a new driving force is needed.