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trump resistance
Fighting Strongman Trump With Our Vision for a More Beautiful Nation
Do we want to let Donald Trump rob us of our capacity for happiness for the next four years?
Dec 05, 2024
Count on one thing: the next four years are going to be tough. If you can muster the energy for political action while Donald Trump and his minions rule Washington, it will have to be channeled in two ways: first, resisting the worst excesses of him (and his party of billionaires); and second, keeping up the effort to make life truly better for everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us.
Or wait. Should it be the other way around? Could a good offense be the best defense?
At the moment, it’s a question that’s not getting much attention. It may seem all too obvious right now that resistance has to be the top priority. Who could have been surprised by the impassioned pleas to resist when Trump won?
That reflex couldn’t be more natural. No matter how old you are, for as long as you can remember, every president’s critics have focused on resisting the dangers they saw in him, while his supporters hailed him as strong enough to resist the dangers they saw threatening the nation.
Such strength was apparently just what voters wanted in 2024, too. As a New York Timesheadline summed up the outcome right after Election Day: “America Hires a Strongman.”
Why?
As former President Bill Clinton once explained, “When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd made the point in a more colorful fashion: “When Americans are scared,” she wrote, they want their president to be “the strong father who protects the home from invaders.”
What dangers? What invaders? Every winning candidate for president gets to fill in those blanks in whatever way he (and yes, it always has been a he) thinks will get him the most votes, any connection with reality being purely optional. So, while Kamala Harris offered quite realistic warnings about threats to democracy, Trump traded on fictional images of “illegal” immigrant murderers and rapists, “big bad” transgender girls threatening oh-so-pure “real” girls, and the “Marxists” heading up the Democratic Party. And, of course, we know who won.
Many voters were clearly scared and insecure. In a recent survey, roughly 80% of Harris’s supporters chose “we must find a way to embrace each other” as their highest priority, while about 70% of Trump’s chose “to protect ourselves.” As sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom put it, Trump voters have “a deep wellspring of anxiety about their ability to predict their security into the near and distant future. Trump has given [them] a way to direct that anger and that anxiety… in a toxic direction.”
As political scientist Bruce Cain noted, “In the choice between safety and every other policy goal, safety usually wins. In the choice between hope and fear, fear has proven to be more powerful even when the basis for it is grossly exaggerated.” Many reports showed that Trump voters were indeed angry, but after talking to hundreds of people in focus groups, the New York Times’s Patrick Healy concluded that anger and anxiety “were one and the same” emotion.
So, as usual, many fearful voters chose the candidate they saw as strong enough to protect them. Reporter David Corn heard one message over and over from crowds at Trump rallies: “The nation must be Trump-led or all is lost.” And Corn sensed what increasingly fearful Americans want: a version of “strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior.” Trump typically claimed that “nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” When he listed the ways he would change America in his speeches, making it “strong” and/or “safe” usually came before “great again.”
But it wasn’t just the policies he proposed like “peace through strength” or even the words he used that his voters cared most about. (Trump consistently outperformed Republicans running for Congress who took similar positions and used similar language.) It was the way he projected a mean and nasty personality. When he first ran for president, Trump said, “Every time things get worse, I do better. Because people want strength. We’re going to be so tough and so mean and so nasty.” And that was indeed the image his campaign projected in its advertising. Since the hunger for a strongman only grows in wartime, the Trump campaign happily made the election look like a war, while he even posted a prayer and picture on social media identifying himself with St. Michael battling the demons.
Pundit William Galston notes that the Trump campaign was “convinced that Trump’s intense personal bond with his supporters would do most of the mobilizing work.” GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini thinks that he forged that bond not with his policies but through “his unique style, his unique aesthetic.” (Yes, ugly can be an aesthetic.)
Of course, gender played a role, too. Every dictionary includes the word strongman, but when was the last time you saw strongwoman? And that tells you so much. One study showed that a belief in “hegemonic masculinity” — the idea that men are stronger than women and so should dominate — was the most accurate predictor of who would vote for Trump.
From FDR to Trump
Trump is perhaps the ultimate American politician who has traded on fear and insecurity to look strong and get votes. But the sad fact is that American presidents have been teaching the public to feel threatened and insecure for a long time — at least since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933 and made it a command center for resisting catastrophe in the midst of the Great Depression.
FDR admitted privately that his New Deal aimed to protect the capitalist system by resisting the threat of socialism, but he couldn’t say that out loud. He felt he could win the public’s confidence by staving off immediate disaster (as he indeed did). In the 1930s, that meant keeping as many Americans as possible out of dire poverty. Two prominent historians have labeled his approach “crisis management,” though he favored the word “security,” which is why the checks we retired folks now get from the government are called “Social Security.”
Once Hitler’s armies had conquered most of Europe, FDR announced that the great threat to national security was no longer the Depression at home but the enemy abroad, though he faced a public reluctant to get involved in war until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Throughout World War II, he would be seen as the strong father protecting the home from invaders.
Ever since, presidents have tried to take on that role. Lyndon Johnson warned that if we didn’t fight the communists in South Vietnam, we’d end up fighting North Vietnamese invaders in San Francisco. George W. Bush warned that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal that, if we didn’t take out Iraq first, could someday be used on American homes.
Almost every president since FDR has made the mantra of “national security” the nation’s highest value and insisted that staving off the threat of evildoers was the path to such “security,” no matter the price.
In 2016, Donald Trump paved his way to victory with similar language. His innovation (and it was a big one) was to refocus on the “enemy from within” — the immigrants, the transgendered, and above all, the liberals.
When Kamala Harris began her abbreviated campaign, it looked like she might break out of that mold. Her “politics of joy” seemed like a politics of confidence. She spoke and looked like a woman who was afraid of nothing, certainly not Donald Trump.
Yet in the last weeks of the campaign, as hers seemed to be stalling, she turned to the same old story: there’s a danger out there named Donald Trump and you’d better vote for me to protect yourself. Harris was, of course, correct, but the election results tell us that Trump did a better job of convincing voters that he was the one who could best protect our homes from invaders.
If Harris had focused more on bringing positive improvements to the lives of all Americans… who knows?
The Perils of Resistance
On Election Night, as the depressing results rolled in, the Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart cautioned that those of us who see Trump as a great danger should move beyond resistance: “We have to continue to fight and work day in and day out to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country that we know is possible.” That’s good advice for a lot of reasons.
It may be that simply resisting the world of Donald Trump and trying to prevent the very worst will indeed seem like a full-time job over the next four years, but do we really want to exhaust ourselves that way? Worse yet, the message resisters send is ultimately a negative one: Whatever we may be, we are not that. So, in the years to come, a politics of resistance runs the same risk that befell the Harris campaign. As Harvard pollster John Della Volpe put it: “’Not being Trump’ was never going to be enough.”
What’s more, resistance is all about stopping change. Yes, sometimes change is dangerous and needs to be stopped, but that still makes such resistance inherently conservative. A devotion to preventing the worst will allow the other side to look like the force for change and so define the terms of debate.
Yet, by definition, liberals and progressives are supposed to be that force. Do we really want to cede that to — yes! — Donald Trump?
For now, at least, the lesson of Election Day 2024 is that, in a contest over which party can best protect Americans, the current version of the Republican Party is likely the winner. We’ve learned in the hardest way possible that the Democrats can’t “out-Republican the Republicans,” as Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, put it.
A politics of resistance could end up merely reinforcing the fear driving MAGA-ism’s longing for a strongman. It’s simply not the right message to send to Trump voters if you wish even a small slice of them to change their minds two to four years from now.
It may feel good to focus on Trump’s evils and exclaim, as poet Walt Whitman did about President Franklin Pierce: “Such a rascal and thief in the presidency. This poor scum — the shit-ass! God damn him! — eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it, and tries to force it on the states.” But to focus solely, or even primarily, on such anger means making Trump the center of our attention. (Exactly what he wants, of course!) Hasn’t he gotten enough attention already?
And do we want to carry all the anger that full-time resistance is likely to breed? Do we want to let Donald Trump rob us of our capacity for happiness for the next four years? We could at least balance our outrage with the sentiment Whitman expressed about President Benjamin Harrison: “I think him mainly a gas bag, the smallest potato in the heap. As long as he remains in office, the aura of the presidency will give him prominence — but after that — oh! what will be his oblivion — utter!”
As the Italian revolutionary philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously put it, in the years to come we could use more “pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will.”
Alternative Vision and Action
Of course, we need to keep up some significant degree of resistance. (I’m definitely not among the astounding 28% of Democratic voters who claimed, in a post-election poll, that they would “support” Trump’s presidency.) But we should heed the words of Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Ben Rhodes: “Democrats must reject the impulse to simply be a resistance that condemns whatever outrageous thing Mr. Trump says. While confronting Mr. Trump when we must, we must also focus on what we stand for. We need to articulate an alternative vision for what kind of democracy comes next.”
Even the New York Timeseditorial board, hardly the most progressive group around, got the point: “A threat to democracy does not exempt leaders from giving voters a plan for the future that reflects the America they want to live in.”
And we can do more than envision a better future and plan for it during the next four years. Though things may be dreadful in Washington, state and local governments still have significant power to pursue policies to make life better. In my Colorado town, for example, there’s a strong effort to push the city council to raise the minimum wage, a measure our county commissioners, under public pressure, already endorsed. Denver is not only preparing to resist the deportation of undocumented residents but offering them access to city services, modeling what a humane government, one that cares about all its people, actually looks like. And even when politicians won’t act, many states allow citizen-initiated referenda like the ones that secured abortion rights in my state and many others.
Then there’s an endless list of things we can do as individuals. Think of it as “prefigurative politics.” As Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day put it, the energy we would burn up trying to tear down an oppressive government can be better used by ignoring that government and building “a new civilization within the shell of the old” — new institutions that genuinely serve people.
It also means building new feelings and attitudes. As we face a nightmarish four years of a federal government built on fear and intent on keeping all Americans (other than billionaires) afraid, anything we do to bring more confidence and happiness into our lives is a step in a better direction — for ourselves and the country.
To repeat: Resistance to Trump will certainly be necessary, especially to protect the most vulnerable among us. But any way we can look to a better future and turn that into a present reality is, in a sense, an act of resistance not only to Trump and the Republicans but to the strongman model of politics that led to his recent victory.
Making beautiful art and music, making delicious meals, making friends, making love — those are all ways to preserve the energy we’ll need for political action. They are also ways to show not just the world but ourselves that, whatever the evils from Washington in the next four years, we can continue building the more humane and happier world we want for everyone.
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We Know That Wannabe Dictator Trump Can Win in 2024—So What Is to Be Done?
With only 11 months to go, this feels like the political crisis of our lifetimes. Where is the resistance we need?
Dec 06, 2023
I finally put up my Christmas lights on Saturday, in a T-shirt with no jacket on a warm December afternoon — a fitting finale to Earth’s hottest year on record. Meanwhile, the world’s life-or-death climate summit is presided over by an oil dictator who insists there is “no science” to support phasing out fossil fuels. For those who wonder if humankind is taking global warming seriously, the joke of holding COP28 in the United Arab Emirates is your answer.
Nearly seven years later, it’s easy to forget how remarkablethe first Women’s March that occurred on Jan. 21, 2017, truly was. The most incredible thing was the size of the protest that occurred on the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s believed that at least 470,000 people attended the main event in Washington, D.C., but satellite protests across the United States and globally drew an estimated 5 million, likely the largest one-day event in American history.
That success resonated for the next four years, as thousands went back to their hometowns and organized political groups that loosely were hailed as “the Trump resistance” — not only staging local protest events but ultimately knocking on doors and sending out postcards by the millions as Democrats reclaimed the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020.
But there’s also something else worth remembering about that initial Woman’s March and the early days of those resisters. Their movement was born in the early morning darkness and frustration of Nov. 9, 2016, amid the shock realization that a dangerous demagogue had somehow been elected the 45th president of the United States. The rage that flowered on a chilly January day in a field of pink “(p-word) hats” was in part regret that more had not been done to stop Trump before the election.
Today, Trump is back, and no one calls him a demagogue anymore — because that’s too polite. The 47th presidency he envisions is tyrannical, even dictatorial — siccing zealous MAGA prosecutors on his political enemies and the media, pardoning 2021′s insurrectionists, mass detention camps for deporting migrants, and calling out troops to put down protests, perhaps as early as his Inauguration Day. And yet he is all but guaranteed the GOP nomination, and an even-money bet against President Joe Biden next fall. Even a normally cautious mainstream media is starting to get it.
“Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” blared Monday’s headline across the New York Times homepage, describing how Team Trump has learned from the failures of its leader’s more outlandish ideas in 2017-21. A super-long Washington Post essay from neocon scholar Robert Kagan — “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” — was that paper’s most-read article. Not to be outdone, The Atlantic dropped a special issue with 24 separate stories about the dangers of a Trump 47.
It’s great journalism, but will it make any more difference in 2024 than the supposedly fatalAccess Hollywood tape did in 2016? What about the millions of casual voters who don’t know The Atlantic from Popular Mechanics, who’ve convinced themselves that America was better during Trump’s somewhat constrained first term than under Biden in a moment of global chaos?
Even more to the point: Where is “the Trump resistance,” now that we know how truly dangerous the man is — and that he can win again?
Few will argue that some groups have faded and some disappeared after the Democrats’ 2020 victories. Here in Philadelphia, for example, Tuesdays with Toomey is gone, its mission of flipping a Pennsylvania Senate seat accomplished. The American University sociologist Dana Fisher — author of 2019′s American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave— told me “I have been tracking many of the groups and some are shells of what they were” — such as the Women’s March organization — “and others are limping along trying to keep funding.”
But some groups are still going strong, three years after Trump left the White House. Vicki Miller, the group leader of Indivisible Philadelphia, told me her members still chat regularly on Zoom. Although there is the occasional protest — including a boisterous street-corner condemnation on the Jan. 6 insurrection anniversary — the focus is heavily on voter turnout, including postcards and phone banking around last month’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court race won by Democrats, as well as lobbying the state’s U.S. senators. Miller said members still sign up for Door 35, a pledge to knock on at least 35 neighbors’ doors to woo undecided voters.
“It’s sad,” Miller said of those early polls showing Trump tied or narrowly ahead, but she was quick to add, “it doesn’t change what we are doing, which is working our tails off to get Joe Biden and Senator [Bob] Casey elected.” She also believes talking to voters about the things that affect them personally, like reproductive rights or, if done the right way, the economy, is most important — more so than hyping the Trumpian threat to democracy.
Maybe. But with only 11 months to go, this feels like the political crisis of our lifetimes, and I can’t stop wondering if there is more to be done before Election Day. Voter turnout is indeed the most critical, but should there be protests or maybe teach-ins to raise awareness for that true sliver of undecideds? Should there be boycotts of companies whose CEOs support Trump (also known as the Yuengling spit-take)?
As I write this on Monday night, “dictator” is a trending topic on X/Twitter. It could be trending nightly if the too-silent majority of Americans who believe in democracy don’t take a more forceful stand. The moment for resisting Trump is right now, not waiting until Jan. 21, 2025.
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Midterm Voters Decisively Rejected Election Deniers
Is a durable majority for safe and secure elections emerging?
Nov 16, 2022
The 2022 election is almost over, about one week after the last ballots were cast. It was a surprising and in many ways inspiring result. Despite inflation, fears of crime, and a toxic political atmosphere, voters took the issue of the health of our democracy seriously. Massive efforts by voting rights groups, election officials of both parties, and law enforcement made a big and visible difference. A few key trends will help shape politics going forward.
Rarely does the public speak so clearly on such a precise issue: voters care enough about democracy to reject those who would undermine it.
First, the election was smooth, fair, and calm. Why? Where was the wave of disruption long promised and feared? One notable answer: election officials were prepared. They were trained in de-escalation. Law enforcement at all levels--state and local police, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security--made clear that attacks on the process would not be tolerated (that, too, is new).
Second, the voters decisively rejected election deniers in their bid to take control of election administration. In six key battleground states--Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania--conspiracy theorists ran for offices that would set the terms of the 2024 elections. All were defeated (in Georgia, in the spring primary).
Election denial candidates' losses weren't for lack of resources. A group of megadonors spent tens of millions of dollars to support them, according to Brennan Center research. Nor was it for inconsistency of message. Nearly one in three Facebook posts and one in five tweets from candidates for secretary of state peddled false election narratives, according to the Midterm Monitor, a collaboration by the Brennan Center and the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
These candidates often ran behind others on their same ticket. Thousands of voters in Nevada supported the Republican Senate candidate and the new governor, for example, but voted to reject the secretary of state candidate who said if he and others won, they would "fix" the 2024 election for Donald Trump. Voters who likely had never thought of the topic three years ago chose their candidates with eyes wide open.
To be clear, the fever has not broken entirely. Dozens of legislative and congressional candidates who voiced lies about the 2020 election were elected. At one level, support for election deniers was still shockingly high. Much of that may be attributable to partisanship, though. Rarely does the public speak so clearly on such a precise issue: voters care enough about democracy to reject those who would undermine it.
A third and less widely covered trend was seen in states, too. Voters backed ballot measures to strengthen democracy while generally rejecting those that would restrict access. Connecticut finally adopted early voting. Michigan expanded early and absentee voting while improving identification requirements. Nevadans backed ranked-choice voting and a "top five" finisher model that would give voters more candidates to choose from in a general election, though that plan will require another vote to become law. Voters in Arizona by more than 70 percent backed curbs on "dark money" while likely rejecting a measure to impose harsher voter ID rules. Of note, the upcoming Supreme Court case on the "independent state legislature theory" could upend these and other democracy-strengthening moves.
While turnout was high in the 2022 midterms, this upswing doesn't close the racial turnout gap, as my colleague Kevin Morris reports. According to preliminary data, early in-person and mail voting turnout was higher for white than nonwhite voters in each of the 28 states for which we already have solid individual-level voting data. The gap varied in size, but it was enormous in certain areas. In Texas, about 40 percent of white voters, but only 20 percent of nonwhite voters, cast their ballots before Election Day. We'll have updated data very soon.
And of course, the former president still spouts lies about our democracy, with his possible candidacy backed by millions of Americans.
The bottom line: we have seen, with growing unease, the rise of an antidemocratic election denier movement. In 2022, we saw the emergence of a pro-democracy movement across both parties. That can be the story of American politics going forward--if we make it so.
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