If the first week of headlines for Donald Trump’s administration were driven by the new pr*sident’s mental instability, the second week’s were unquestionably driven by the resistance to him.
The Muslim ban Trump issued last Friday incited a spontaneous flow of protests across the country that continued throughout the week, and not just in progressive strongholds along the coasts. Thousands turned out Wednesday in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to reject Trump’s order while more than 500 took to the streets in Columbia, South Carolina. The widespread unrest cemented the anti-Trump movement. Far from being a one-time outpouring at the Women’s March over inauguration weekend, the resistance is energized and clearly here to stay.
Democrats in Washington also felt the heat—and to very good effect. Just to name a few: After hundreds of protesters rallied at the San Francisco home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, she unleashed a withering attack on Sen. Jeff Sessions and voted against his nomination for attorney general; Sen. Chuck Schumer faced a similarly spirited crowd outside his Brooklyn apartment, causing him to swiftly shift from approving most Trump cabinet nominees to casting “no” votes down the line. Other converts included Rhode Island’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse following a Sunday night encounter with fuming constituents.
By the second half of the week, Senate Democrats took the unusual step of altogether boycotting committee votes on Trump’s picks for Treasury and Health and Human Services after both nominees were found to have lied about information they provided to the Senate Finance Committee.
Even Trump himself surrendered his plans to visit a Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee after the company feared protests would overtake the event.
Many people have been comparing the anti-Trump movement on the left to the tea party movement that sprung up to oppose Barack Obama in 2009-2010. And while the playbook progressive activists are using—the Indivisible Guide—is in fact based on the tea party’s successes at influencing their members of Congress, let’s make a couple of important distinctions.
The first has to do with popular support for the sitting president. Barack Obama actually won by a landslide in 2008—winning both the popular vote and sweeping the Electoral College—meaning he actually had a mandate along with near 70th percentile approval ratings during his first weeks in office. Trump did win the electoral college but he lost the popular vote by historic margins and his approval ratings started at historic lows—45 percent. So low, in fact, that he quickly became the first president in Gallup’s history to achieve a majority DISapproval rating during his first weeks in office, sitting at 51–43 percent disapproval by February 1. (The best!)
The second distinction has to do with popular support for resistance to the sitting president. At the height of the tea party movement (roughly mid- to late-2010), about 30 percent of Americans said they supported tea party ideals (Gallup, ABC/WashPo). But an ABC/ Washington Post poll this week found that 60 percent of Americans supported the women’s march. Incidentally, those polled were about equally aware of both efforts, with 54 percent saying they had heard “a lot” about the tea party in October 2010, and 57 percent saying they knew “a lot” about the women’s march.
Bottom line: The number of people who generally support anti-Trump efforts already far exceed those who opposed Obama. Additionally, anti-Trump efforts have grown at a much faster pace. The question now is: Is it sustainable?
Here’s where some comparisons to the LGBTQ movement early in Obama’s presidency give me tremendous hope. Similar to the world-wide women’s marches sparked by Trump’s election/inauguration, pro-LGBTQ marches erupted around the globe following the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which overturned same-sex marriage rights, in November 2008. Much like the Women’s March, it was an indication that the grassroots energy existed. People were viscerally anguished and they were making it known in no uncertain terms.
But after the initial protesting came a flashpoint, or a galvanizing moment, specifically caused by the new administration. In Trump’s case, it was colossal—the Muslim ban. Activists grabbed their signs and went right back to work for a second weekend in a row.
In the case of Obama, it wasn’t nearly so flashy but LGBTQ activists sure took note. In June 2009, Obama’s Justice Department filed its first brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) statute that prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. It was literally written by a Bush holdover and included all sorts of offensive and legally damaging arguments, such as the notion that DOMA didn’t violate the constitutional principles of Due Process and Equal Protection. By the end of the day the brief went public, everyone from major national groups to bloggers to grassroots activists had denounced it.
That was the moment that many LGBTQ activists realized an ostensibly friendly administration wasn’t going to do what they wanted unless it was forced to.
In some ways, it was a similar revelation that progressive activists had this week: Our Democratic lawmakers aren’t going to oppose everything Trump unless we make them. But what gives progressive activists now a real discernible advantage over where LGBTQ activists were in 2009 is that they already have a playbook to follow. The Indivisible Guide has provided the grassroots with a road map for channeling the heat in the streets and it’s already working. In 2009, queer activists more or less had to start from scratch because Washington-based gay groups were never going to apply the kind of pressure necessary to make a Democratic administration supremely uncomfortable.
So yes, the pressure is sustainable, even if massive and widespread protests aren’t necessarily. As the Indivisible Guide notes, most tea party groups were small, local, and dedicated, sometimes including fewer than 10 people. That is totally sustainable. In fact, Ralph Nader argues that it takes only a tiny fraction of the population to produce the kind of change that came through the abolition, women’s suffrage, and labor movements.
“Less than 1 percent of the population was involved in these struggles — but that’s all it takes,” he said.
All I can say to that is, I believe. I watched a movement go from being a complete and total underdog on same-sex marriage in 2004-2006 to winning marriage equality a decade later. I believe.
Kerry Eleveld is the author of Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency.