 |
|
Wall Street Journal: How might the left reckon with a Kamala
Posted on: October 28, 2024 at 08:22:11 CT
Wildcat KSU
Posts:
32147
Member For:
25.57 yrs
Level:
User
M.O.B. Votes:
0
Harris defeat.
When you read this, you realize how utterly nuts progs are... TLDR for you, Feeji. It's too bad TB doesn't show the photos of these nutjobs like the article does. You can see the psycho in their eyes.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/left-wrestles-with-a-possible-trump-win-40857a95?mod=djem10point
How a Splintered Left Is Preparing for a Possible Trump Victory
After the former president’s 2016 victory, they marched. Now, Democrats wrestle with how to mount an uprising—and whether to even do so.
Vanessa Wruble was active in the Women’s March in January 2017. Now she is off the mainstream political grid. Photo: Stella Kalinina for WSJ
By Joshua ChaffinFollow
and Valerie BauerleinFollow
Oct. 28, 2024 5:00 am ET
Save
Share
Text
442 Responses
Explore Audio Center
By now America is well versed in the predictions of the political right’s potential 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 Harris’s 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 Trump’s victory gave way to a resistance that spawned the Women’s March that drew nearly half-a-million protesters to Washington, D.C., and millions more to related rallies nationwide.
You may also like
Tap For Sound
A new Wall Street Journal poll shows former President Donald Trump ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, as his approval rating of his time as president hits an all-time high. Illustration: Cam Pollack/WSJ
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 Trump’s 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 Women’s Safety Teams—hosted by a Women’s March veteran who noted its timing amid “escalating political violence.”
Others are channeling their nervousness into action: They are planning to attend Women’s 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 we’re doing something,” said Erin Gately, a 47-year-old physician assistant who last time took to the streets to protest after Trump’s election, but says this time she would focus on tangible actions like protecting reproductive rights.
Erin Gately at a pill-packing party, where volunteers fill boxes with abortion kits to mail to women in red states with strict limits. Photo: Kayana Szymczak for WSJ
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 Trump’s 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.
“We’ve 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.
“We’ll 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 Trump’s 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 Women’s March held the day after Trump’s inauguration as a way to register profound opposition to his administration.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think will be the reactions to the election results? Join the conversation below.
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 f—ing nightmare if Trump gets elected? Absolutely,” she said.
But in the intervening years, Wruble has been ground down by disputes with former Women’s March comrades, the 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 don’t know how to be effective,” Wruble said.
Among those taking part in the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., was Vanessa Wruble, in gray-and-black scarf. Photo: Vikram Gandhi
Vanessa Wruble this month at her California ranch-turned-animal sanctuary. Photo: Stella Kalinina for WSJ
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, acknowledged the organization had suffered typical early growing pains, including internal conflicts, but said Women’s 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 ‘We’re upset!’ but that doesn’t 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 Tennessee—and maybe America, too.
Melissa Fiero speaking at the Women’s March in Austin, Texas, in 2017. Photo: Callie Richmond
“We’ve looked at different countries,” she said. “I really think it’s 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 harbored a cautious optimism after Biden’s 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. “It’s not a shock” this time, she observed.
Democrats have been hopeful since President Biden’s July exit from the race, but now many are more nervous. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco chronicle/Associated Press
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 Clinton’s historic victory. Then the results trickled in. “Around 8 o’clock, excuse my French, I said to my husband: this [guy’s] going to win!”
Soon the former marketing specialist found herself signing up for the Texas branch of the Women’s March and then being thrust into a leadership role when other volunteers became overwhelmed. “For me, the Women’s 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 she’ll win. But it told me Hillary would, too.”
Write to Joshua Chaffin at joshua.chaffin@wsj.com and Valerie Bauerlein at Valerie.Bauerlein@wsj.com
When you read this, you realize how utterly nuts progs are... TLDR for you, Feeji. It's too bad TB doesn't show the photos of these nutjobs like the article does. You can see the psycho in their eyes.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/left-wrestles-with-a-possible-trump-win-40857a95?mod=djem10point
How a Splintered Left Is Preparing for a Possible Trump Victory
After the former president’s 2016 victory, they marched. Now, Democrats wrestle with how to mount an uprising—and whether to even do so.
Vanessa Wruble was active in the Women’s March in January 2017. Now she is off the mainstream political grid. Photo: Stella Kalinina for WSJ
By Joshua ChaffinFollow
and Valerie BauerleinFollow
Oct. 28, 2024 5:00 am ET
Save
Share
Text
442 Responses
Explore Audio Center
By now America is well versed in the predictions of the political right’s potential 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 Harris’s 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 Trump’s victory gave way to a resistance that spawned the Women’s March that drew nearly half-a-million protesters to Washington, D.C., and millions more to related rallies nationwide.
You may also like
Tap For Sound
A new Wall Street Journal poll shows former President Donald Trump ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, as his approval rating of his time as president hits an all-time high. Illustration: Cam Pollack/WSJ
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 Trump’s 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 Women’s Safety Teams—hosted by a Women’s March veteran who noted its timing amid “escalating political violence.”
Others are channeling their nervousness into action: They are planning to attend Women’s 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 we’re doing something,” said Erin Gately, a 47-year-old physician assistant who last time took to the streets to protest after Trump’s election, but says this time she would focus on tangible actions like protecting reproductive rights.
Erin Gately at a pill-packing party, where volunteers fill boxes with abortion kits to mail to women in red states with strict limits. Photo: Kayana Szymczak for WSJ
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 Trump’s 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.
“We’ve 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.
“We’ll 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 Trump’s 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 Women’s March held the day after Trump’s inauguration as a way to register profound opposition to his administration.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think will be the reactions to the election results? Join the conversation below.
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 f—ing nightmare if Trump gets elected? Absolutely,” she said.
But in the intervening years, Wruble has been ground down by disputes with former Women’s March comrades, the 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 don’t know how to be effective,” Wruble said.
Among those taking part in the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., was Vanessa Wruble, in gray-and-black scarf. Photo: Vikram Gandhi
Vanessa Wruble this month at her California ranch-turned-animal sanctuary. Photo: Stella Kalinina for WSJ
Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, acknowledged the organization had suffered typical early growing pains, including internal conflicts, but said Women’s 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 ‘We’re upset!’ but that doesn’t 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 Tennessee—and maybe America, too.
Melissa Fiero speaking at the Women’s March in Austin, Texas, in 2017. Photo: Callie Richmond
“We’ve looked at different countries,” she said. “I really think it’s 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 harbored a cautious optimism after Biden’s 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. “It’s not a shock” this time, she observed.
Democrats have been hopeful since President Biden’s July exit from the race, but now many are more nervous. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco chronicle/Associated Press
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 Clinton’s historic victory. Then the results trickled in. “Around 8 o’clock, excuse my French, I said to my husband: this [guy’s] going to win!”
Soon the former marketing specialist found herself signing up for the Texas branch of the Women’s March and then being thrust into a leadership role when other volunteers became overwhelmed. “For me, the Women’s 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 she’ll win. But it told me Hillary would, too.”
Write to Joshua Chaffin at joshua.chaffin@wsj.com and Valerie Bauerlein at Valerie.Bauerlein@wsj.com
Please explain why this message is being reported.
MESSAGE THREAD
Wall Street Journal: How might the left reckon with a Kamala - Wildcat KSU - 10/28 08:22:11