Where’s the ‘Trump Resistance’ as autocracy looms? | Will Bunch Newsletter

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.

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Nearly seven years later, it’s easy to forget how remarkable the 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 fatal Access 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.

Question: Why are Pennsylvania’s political power brokers still cosplaying the Gilded Age in New York City in 2023? — Via jim haigh (@jimhaigh) on Twitter

Answer: Jim is asking here about the Pennsylvania Society, the annual December bash that started in 1899 with robber barons and their bought-and-paid-for politicians riding the Pennsylvania Railroad to party and scheme in New York City. Frankly, the only thing that’s changed in 124 years is that now it’s Amtrak. Proponents claim it’s a monument to bipartisanship; Gov. Josh Shapiro told this year’s blow-out: “We have proven that we can work together and deliver great results for the people of Pennsylvania.” Maybe, but too often I see that what’s hailed as “bipartisanship” is oligarch-funded Democrats and Republicans uniting to screw the middle class. Please toss the Pennsylvania Society in the dustbin of history.

As a journalist, I don’t mind the plethora of early presidential polls, especially the ones that offer insights into voting blocs I’m interested in writing about. Newsletter readers feel differently. You agree there are too many polls, and the media gives them way too much coverage. “A year out, they are more likely to create unwanted realities than reflect actual realities,” wrote Rosalind Holtzman, adding that “it clouds the real issue which is, and must be, front page — the stakes, not the odds.” Wendy Schweiger added that media outlets “obviously don’t care that this incessant drumbeat is gradually eroding the electorate’s dedication to voting when the time comes.”

📮This week’s question: The University of Pennsylvania created controversy when administrators — citing campus tension and recent incidents of antisemitism — tried (unsuccessfully) to ban a campus showing of the film Israelism, critical of that nation’s treatment of Palestinians. Are universities right to take such actions, or are moves like this an attack on free speech? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.

How ironic that the actor Felicity Huffman — whose fame at one time was largely derived from starring in a hit TV show called Desperate Housewives — is now renowned as a desperate mom, so much so that she committed a felony hoping to get her daughter into the right college. Huffman, now 60, gave her first interview last week since she was convicted in 2019 of mail fraud — and served a token 11 days behind bars — for taking part in a widespread college-admissions cheating scandal. Talking to an L.A. TV station, Huffman tried to explain why she bribed a proctor $15,000 to change answers on her daughter’s SAT exam to elevate her score.

“I know hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So — I did it,” the Emmy Award winner said, adding: “I felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future. And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law ... I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around.’ To my undying shame, I didn’t.”

Not surprisingly, Huffman’s comments drew a fair amount of online criticism. Many wondered why the daughter of millionaire parents — who later took the SAT again without cheating and is studying theater at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University — even needed a fancy degree to go into her family’s line of work. That’s true, but I also believe that Huffman just gave voice to the anxieties that millions of Americans feel, in a warped society where too many young people feel judged not by the content of the character, but by the nameplate on their diploma. Her outrageous actions can’t be justified, but (as I wrote in my book) we must reevaluate the rigged meritocracy of modern college and create pathways, not stigma, for those without degrees, let alone “the right” degree.

Speaking of college, the piece I wrote on this date four years ago may very well be the most important column I’ve ever written — maybe not so much for readers, but for me personally. At the height of the Democratic presidential primaries (remember those?), I criticized then-candidate, now-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for what I considered an underwhelming proposal on college affordability. I wrote: “What Pete Buttigieg — and all the others hoping to score pragmatism points with their small-ball ideas for higher ed — doesn’t get is that college no longer is just an economic problem, that this class conflict we’ve watched escalate over decades is directly tied to America’s democratic crack-up.” The reaction to this column inspired me to write the book proposal that became 2022′s After The Ivory Tower Falls. Check out my Dec. 5, 2019 piece: “What Pete Buttigieg doesn’t get about how college has ripped America in two.”

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