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2024-10-31 01:05:01 UTC
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Permalinkpotential response should Donald Trump lose on Nov. 5: Anxiety boils about
another stop-the-steal effort to contest the outcome.
Far less scrutinized: How might the left reckon with a Kamala Harris defeat?
How would the Democrats handle a result that many have for months proclaimed
is an existential threat to democracy itself?
As polls narrow, some Democratic stalwarts are trying to temper the sense of
despair and the occasionally apocalyptic forecasts sweeping through their
party. Jim Hannon, a psychotherapist and seasoned liberal organizer in
Massachusetts, counseled calm in an open letter last week, noting Harriss
campaign strength, while urging a broader perspective.
Trump could win. So, panic then? No, he wrote. A Trump presidency would be
awful but not the end of history.
Democrats have been here before. In 2016, their bewilderment at Trumps
victory gave way to an ersatz resistance that spawned the Womens March that
drew nearly half-a-million protesters to Washington, D.C., and millions more
to related rallies nationwide.
This time would differ, many veterans of that movement agree. Trump is no
longer an unknown entity. Moreover, the possibility of his victory,
unimaginable to many eight years ago, is now as good as a coin toss.
Resistance regroups
Across America, more than a dozen progressives in various positions of
influence told The Wall Street Journal that they are dreading the prospect of
Trumps return to power, and dismayed that half the country might see a
completely different reality than they see. Some are bracing for unrest. On a
recent evening, more than 200 people joined a Zoom meeting titled Mass
Training For Womens Safety Teamshosted by a Womens March veteran who noted
its timing amid escalating political violence.
Others are channeling their nervousness into action: They are planning to
attend Womens Marches scheduled in Washington and beyond on the Saturday
before the election. In Boston, they are joining pill-packing parties, where
volunteers fill boxes with abortion kits to mail to women in red states with
strict limits. We feel like were doing something, said Erin Gately, a 47-
year-old physician assistant who last time took to the streets to protest
after Trumps election, but says this time she would focus on tangible
actions like protecting reproductive rights.
Danielle Deiseroth, 28, the executive director of Data for Progress, a
liberal research group, said she has been talking with leaders of other
progressive nonprofits about how to push back if Trump is elected and
fulfills his promise to exact revenge on his political enemies, including by
weaponizing arms of the federal government.
She anticipates progressives will look to Democratic governors as political
torchbearers and Democratic attorneys general to contest Trump initiatives,
similar to how their Republican counterparts have challenged the Biden
administration.
Laurie Woodward García, a South Florida activist, founded People Power United
during Trumps presidency to champion progressive causes, and, in her words,
stand up to fascism. Her biweekly online seminars, some scheduled for after
the election, explore the consequences if a President Trump were to enact
Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda he has distanced himself from.
Each session has drawn about 500 viewers.
Weve got to be optimistic and fight like hell, she said.
That might be complicated by the uncertain trajectory of the Democratic
Party, which would be at a generational inflection point with Barack Obama,
the Clintons and President Biden all off the stage and no clear heir apparent
should Vice President Harris lose.
Well be in rebuilding mode, said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of
Orangeburg, S.C., the rare Black female progressive legislator in a deep red
state.
Finding a way forward
Already, the resistance movement born of Trumps 2016 victory has splintered,
with clashes between hard-edge progressives and moderates driving out some
key leaders.
In January 2017, Vanessa Wruble, then living in Brooklyn, was a prime mover
in the Womens March held the day after Trumps inauguration as a way to
register profound opposition to his administration.
This time, Wruble expects to stay home with her assortment of dogs, emus,
pigs, peacocks and other rescue animals in the California desert if he is
inaugurated again. Now 50, she is off the mainstream political grid and
living on a ranch-turned-animal sanctuary at the edge of Joshua Tree National
Park.
Do I think it will be a fing nightmare if Trump gets elected? Absolutely,
she said.
But in the intervening years, Wruble has been ground down by disputes with
former Womens March comrades, a pandemic and her own uneasiness with a
younger generation of progressive activists. She also confesses uncertainty
over the central task: how to confront Trump and Trumpism? Marching seems
milquetoast, she said.
I wish I could say, Oh, we can join together and do this, that and the
other thing. But I think the problem is we dont know how to be effective,
Wruble said.
Rachel OLeary Carmona, executive director of Womens March, acknowledged the
organization had suffered typical early growing pains, including internal
conflicts, but said Womens Marches remain the biggest on-ramp to the
movement on the left.
To Jeremy Varon, a professor at the New School in New York City who has
written extensively about political violence and extremist groups such as the
Weather Underground, the paucity of concrete options to confront Trump
reflects a longstanding weakness on the American Left.
You can put as many millions of people in the street saying Were upset!
but that doesnt change the institutional reality, he said.
Stay here and cope
Six months ago, Melissa Fiero, a lonely Democratic activist living in a deep
red corner of Appalachia, began peeling the political stickers off her truck
in hopes of sparing it from further abuse by vandals, who had already keyed
it and bashed the tailgate.
She and her husband also stopped leaving their dogs outside unattended after
receiving death threats that she chalked up to having a Biden sign in the
front yard. Should Trump win, the Fieros expect to quit their home in
northeast Tennesseeand maybe America, too.
Weve looked at different countries, she said. I really think its going
to be that bad if he wins.
Varon is skeptical of pledges to leave the U.S., a complex process that can
take years. More likely, he argued, is that people would turn inward. In
weaker moments, he confessed, he has imagined riding out a second Trump
administration at his Hudson Valley home, strumming his guitar and gardening.
Most people, Varon predicted, are going to stay here and figure out some
way to cope with the next four years. The danger is resignation.
Not long ago, the mood seemed brighter. Some Democrats flirted with optimism
after Bidens July exit from the race and then a buoyant convention that
propelled Harris. Now, many are contemplating defeat, in some instances by
studying the recent experience of abortion-rights and pro-LGBTQ+ groups in
conservative states and mining lessons.
The hope, according to Gabe Tobias, a political strategist who has advised
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and other members of the
Squad, would be to minimize the damage Trump could do in a second term.
For all the unease, pre-election unrest is far lower than in 2020, according
to Erin Miller, of ACLED, a nonprofit organization that monitors conflict
worldwide. It was just as likely, she speculated, that a second Trump victory
would pass with a whimper as opposed to an uprising. Its not a shock this
time, she observed.
That is little comfort to Fiero, who recalls election night eight years ago
when she had a bottle of prosecco ready to toast what would be Hillary
Clintons historic victory. Then the results trickled in. Around 8 oclock,
excuse my French, I said to my husband: this [guys] going to win!
Soon the former marketing specialist found herself signing up for the Texas
branch of the Womens March and then being thrust into a leadership role when
other volunteers became overwhelmed. For me, the Womens March kind of
pulled me out of a terrible funk, she recalled.
This election season, Fiero foresees darkness. It scares me to my core, she
said. My gut tells me shell win. But it told me Hillary would, too.
--
"The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,"
-- DoJ-certified imbecile Joe Biden