Life in Activism: Four Reasons Why Grassroots Resistance to Trump Appears So Muted

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

For the weekend after the 2016 election, I had planned a family weekend getaway to New York City, which I thought would be relaxing and fun.

LOL.

The hotel we stayed in was only about three blocks from Trump Tower. At night, I could actually hear anti-Trump chanting from marchers. During the day, I kept looking at my phone to see how many new people had signed up to the Daily Kos email list from a petition we had launched about electing the president by national popular vote via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The petition went viral on Facebook. In one week, more than 2,000,000 people had signed it, over 800,000 of whom were new to the Daily Kos email list. The resistance was already in full swing.

This time around sure feels different, doesn't it? No big marches. No shutting down the overwhelmed phone lines of congressional offices. No viral petitions or articles (heck, Facebook actually depresses politicized content now). No comparable surge in small donations to progressive organizations or progressive candidates in special elections like the post-2016 bonanza. No new organizations like Indivisible or Women's March popping up seemingly every week. There has been the rise of Bluesky, but that has sort of been it.

As someone who was closely plugged in to the resistance eight years ago, and who has spent over 20 years working full time in progressive and Democratic grassroots political organizing, I have a rare perspective on why things are so different during the transition to a second Trump administration. Below the fold, for paid subscribers, I offer my four main reasons why the resistance to Trump seems to be comparatively muted this time around.