The Tea Party movement, which rose up in the early years of the Obama presidency to oppose pretty much everything he stood for, was a reactionary, often-embarrassing political spectacle.
But as reactionary, often-embarrassing political spectacles go, it was a pretty effective one. Tea Partiers may have had trouble spelling their slogans correctly, but they managed to block a lot of Obama’s progressive agenda.
Now a group of former congressional staffers with years of experience fighting against the Tea Party are urging fellow progressives to adopt some of that group’s most effective tactics to thwart the incoming Trump regime. In an already much-discussed document called Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, these activists urge Trump opponents to
stand indivisibly opposed to Trump and the members of Congress (MoCs) who would do his bidding. Together, we have the power to resist — and we have the power to win.
We know this because we’ve seen it before. The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own MoCs to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism— and they won.
We believe that protecting our values, our neighbors, and ourselves will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda — but a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance, and fairness. Trump is not popular. He does not have a mandate. He does not have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party can stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.
One of the great strengths of the Tea Party, the Indivisible authors note, is that it offered unified opposition to virtually everything Obama and his allies stood for — and punished those Republicans who wavered in the anti-Obama crusade.
The Tea Party focused on saying NO to Members of Congress (MoCs) on their home turf. While the Tea Party activists were united by a core set of shared beliefs, they actively avoided developing their own policy agenda. Instead, they had an extraordinary clarity of purpose, united in opposition to President Obama. They didn’t accept concessions and treated weak Republicans as traitors.
Local Tea Party groups focused their attention on their local representatives in Congress, and made life uncomfortable for those Republicans who weren’t willing to be “their voice of opposition on Capitol Hill.” In doing so, they garnered political influence out of proportion to their relatively small numbers.
By adopting a similar strategy, Indivisible argues, the anti-Trump movement could
Stall the Trump agenda by forcing [MoCs] to redirect energy away from their priorities. Congressional offices have limited time and limited people. A day that they spend worrying about you is a day that they’re not ending Medicare, privatizing public schools, or preparing a Muslim registry.
Sap Representatives’ will to support or drive reactionary change. If you do this right, you will have an outsized impact. Every time your MoC signs on to a bill, takes a position, or makes a statement, a little part of his or her mind will be thinking: “How am I going to explain this to the angry constituents who keep showing up at my events and demanding answers?”
Reaffirm the illegitimacy of the Trump agenda. The hard truth is that Trump, McConnell, and Ryan will have the votes to cause some damage. But by objecting as loudly and powerfully as possible, and by centering the voices of those who are most affected by their agenda, you can ensure that people understand exactly how bad these laws are from the very start – priming the ground for the 2018 midterms and their repeal when Democrats retake power.
Indivisible runs through these lessons from the Tea Party fairly quickly, and follows them up with a good deal of very practical advice on how to best get the attention of local MoC’s — from organized phone calling to office sit-ins.
The guide is free. I think it will prove invaluable to anti-Trump activists over the next several years.
But if you were to use those tactics then you’d be just as partisan and obstructionist as the Tea Party was. If Trump actually does what he says, as unlikely as that is, and intends to put a trillion dollars towards infrastructure I’m going to support that. Because it would help people.
If he tries to start a Muslim registry I’ll oppose that, because it’s wrong.
I’d rather fight for what’s right and fight against what’s wrong than just point at the opposition and say they’re cartoon character villains. That sort of tribalism is what led to the rise of Trump.
@Pendraeg And will those billions of dollars in infrastructure only benefit white majority communities? I have yet to see or hear anything from Trump or his supporters or cabinet picks that they will do anything other than benefit their own pockets and harm people they don’t like.
I agree with you on not protesting just for the sake of protesting. I do not yet believe that our fears are *not* knee jerk reactions, however. There are already pre-written bills in various states which are blatantly anti-LGBT, for example, which the GoP are hoping to ram through as soon as Mr. Trump is sworn in.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lgbt-state-bills-discrimination_us_570ff4f2e4b0060ccda2a7a9
@Fishy Goat And I agree with you. I don’t think Trump actually intends to carry out the positive things he talked about. Nor do I think the fears and worries people have are knee jerk reactions.
I’m just specifically referring this Indivisble Guide which does say that we just need to protest and obstruct regardless of the issue. Which I don’t agree with. Those sorts of tactics may be effective I’ll admit, but that doesn’t mean they principled.
I do fear these tactics are a bit of a nuclear arms race, figuratively speaking. On the one hand, those of us with principles don’t even like the idea of people having these things in their tool boxes. On the other, if the “bad guys” already have them and are using them, the “good guys” are going to have a rough time if they don’t have comparable weapons at their disposal. To a degree this may be the old conundrum of if the ends justifies the means.
@Michael Drew But we have better ideas, all opinion polls show that the majority of the country favors policies that are center left if not outright left in nature. We win when we actually fight for those ideas, to my mind the issue with the democratic party and this election in particular is that the democrats have largely abandoned progressive policies. Instead opting to become conservative-lite.
@Pendraeg –
I am totally on the fence about being obstructive.
On the one hand – I am totally against it. It only hurts our democracy, and leaves the country vulnerable in ways we can’t imagine (not having a full Supreme Court, allowing us to get dangerously close to the debt ceiling, Veterans affairs and the 9/11 bill).
On the other hand – I think its time for liberals to fight fire with fire. Republicans used this tactic – and OH LOOk they now control the federal government (and my state government, which has created a budget shortfall and they just struck ‘climate change’ as a policy from our DNR). While I fully believe that we should always try to do the honorable thing – we already tried that. We have tried that for 8 straight years and it has hurt us everywhere.
I just don’t know the best strategy to get through these 4 years and that is what terrifies me the most.
Also, I work in compliance for infrastructure and agree that his plan is actually not going to help – currently my state’s biggest issue is that we are not bringing in enough money to update roads (two large projects in the biggest city in the state are pulling most federal and state funds). The governor refuses to have any additional tax, therefore our roads are crumbling. That is our biggest issue – and Trump’s plan will not help that.
@Dan Hoan I picked the infrastructure propsal because it was the only thing I could think of off hand that Trump had proposed that wasn’t either stupid or horrifying at face value. It’s possible that you’re right and when I have more time to go over it it’ll turn out to do more harm than good and I’ll oppose. I was just making the point that I don’t believe we should obstruct just for obstructions sake.
Certainly there will be things, most likely many, that we should work to block and defeat but we have to do it in the right way and for the right reasons.
I don’t think we ever know the right strategy for sure. All we can do is try to do what is right and accept the consequences of that. For me I’ve been saying that honestly I vehemently disagreed with enough of Clinton’s policies that for me the outcome of this was going to be largely similar regardless of who won. Trump’s victory just means those fights are going to much uglier.
The Republicans long ago lost any claims to be a political party with any principles other than winning. They misused filibusters to shut down Obama’s agenda; they supress votes and gerrymander themselves into power in places like North Carolina — so much so that a professor who monitors the legitimacy of elections around the world says that the state is no longer a democracy; it’s worse than some autocratic goverments in the developing world. Oh, and the Republicans basically stole a supreme court nomination from Obama.
Trump is going even further, breaking all the political norms that used to govern politics in America — seeking to undermine the press, conducting foreign policy while Obama is still president. He’s a kleptocrat. He’s an authoritarian. He’s completely unqualified. Republican politicians know all this but are happy to enable his worst tendencies because it will help them push a draconian policy agenda.
So, yeah, we need to be obstructive. It’s really the only chance we have to stop Trump and the Republicans from destroying our democracy altogether. These are not normal times.
But if we do the same thing, even in response, how are we better? You don’t abandon principles just because it’s easier to win without them.
Hold. The. Line! Nothing Trump wants gets thru, period. Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Make the next 2 years molasses for the Fascist Party. Any bill they propose is poison. The response from Democrats/progressives/decent humans should be either:
1)’that is a disgusting idea, it shall not pass’
2)’nope, not good enough’
Besides, Trump’s so incompetent, and the Republicans so unreasonable, they can be made to take the blame for the aforementioned molasses. ‘Republican obstructionism’ is in the lexicon at this point
@Pendraeg
Well for one we aren’t on the side that wants to enslave and discriminate against anyone who isn’t a white christian male.
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
With you all the way.
@Axecalibur So behave as they do then. And where does that mentality stop? They use bribery and lies so it’s okay if we do, they use violence so it’s okay if we do. As I said, it’s that my side or nothing tribalism that led to Trump’s rise.
@Ooglyboggles Neither do a lot of Republicans, behaving as if they are all represented by the worst of their party just ensures that those divisions become deeper. Politics isn’t a team sport it’s about ensuring the will of the people is represented.
That is true. I was just thinking about how sometimes the reason tactics are wrong are partially because of the ends, or possibly the context of the conflict. For instance, I recently saw something about a conservative wanting a “safe space” from liberal professors. It sounds ridiculous to us, but we would probably laud a student who managed to get a “safe space” from a conservative professor. The difference being the liberal is unlikely to be saying anything particularly harmful to the conservative, but conservative thought concerning many who are likely to be liberals like LGBTQ, racial minorities, women, etc. are likely to actually be harmful and potentially triggering to someone with PTSD. The reverse is unlikely. So one angle to look at it is that GOP obstruction was at the expense of every vulnerable person in America, including their own constituents, while Democratic obstructionism may be for the benefit of everyone but possibly the most powerful. It’s something to consider, anyway.
@Pendraeg
Because we aren’t fascists. I should think that’s obvious. There’s a qualitative difference between holding the line in the fight against fascism and holding the line in the fight against civil rights.
Bullshit. Republicans have been the party of naked white supremacy and generalised bigotry since 1965, and anyone who votes for them is a racist piece of shit.
@Dalillama Except that if we use fascist tactics we become fascists. I’m not saying don’t fight, I’m not saying surrender to the sort of right wing idiocy Trump represents. I’m saying we have to fight in a principled manner, that it’s not enough to overcome our opponents, but that we also have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
I know quite a few Republicans, and no they’re not. More accurately they are willing to overlook that racism, it doesn’t excuse it or make it okay, but boiling all Republicans down to just racists is every bit the lazy thinking that we need to oppose.
@Pendraeg
Again we’re not on the side of bigots and bigot enablers. That in of itself, alongside many other things that can be summed up as “help people not the selfish assholes who bleed the country for god and profit” kind of tips the moral scale in our favor.
They don’t represent the will of the people. They represent the top ten of 1 percent who profit from draining the middle class down to the last drop while utilizing the racists as a platform.
Our higher standard is NOT ACCOMODATING AND NORMALIZING THEIR NEOFASCIST TENDENCIES. It ain’t that hard to uphold.
@Ooglyboogles Except that if we engage in that same behavior those scales equal out really quickly, it’s not our right to force change, even positive change on people through force, whether physical force or otherwise. Instead I say we should have enough faith that our ideas are better and that people will see that.
But neither did the Democratic party to a large extent, you don’t represent the will of the people by forcing them capitulate, and that’s what Republican style obstruction is. The use of force.
And I’m not saying we normalize that behavior, which is precisely why we can’t use the same immoral and unethical tactics they do.
@Pendraeg
Minus the bigotry, yes
In space, the territorial borders of the United States. In time, hopefully January 2021. In extent, whatever works
Pendraeg meet politics, politics meet Pendraeg. I’ll let you 2 get better acquainted…
*rolls eyes*
Yes! Luckily, I’m not a tribalist. So… Prollem solved
@Axecalibur Except you’re acting as a tribalist. Roll your eyes all you like but if your stance is that my side is excused in any behavior because we are by definition good then that’s tribal behavior. And that’s precisely what you’re doing.
This is no longer about our two party system. This is about not allowing a fascist dictator to destroy America. What George W. Bush did was systematic degradation of our reputation, our military responsibilities and our economy. What Trump will do is dismantle our principles, divide our nation, divide us from the world, involve us in imaginary and real conflicts and wars and make sure that the economy only improves for the 1%. He has literally failed at every business, investment and relationship he has ever had except with those who rides his megomaniacism for their own gain. Resistance and obstruction of infrastructure policies to help America, other than the 1%, won’t be an issue because he will only play lip service and hypnotically assure his followers he is improving their lot while secretly only using facts from the previous administration’s crop cycling. We won’t be obstructing progress or economic prosperity…if you believe he will do anything for anyone other than himself and his cronies, you are a freaking lemming…so follow them over the cliff dumbass.
@Angry Again I’m not saying don’t block bad policies, I’m not saying don’t fight against policies that will hurt people. I’m saying do it in a principled manner, do it by being better than our opponents not by just being them. And that’s what this specific guide that this post is pushing for.
@Pendraeg
Actually as a citizen of the US it is your obligation to influence the political process of the US.
You constantly say these things yet somehow make the implications that somehow the GOP will all of a sudden decide to not screw over the poor and minorities and we’d become our monsters. I find that more laughably naive than the 14 year old libertarian that thinks South Park is a legitimate foundation for a political philosophy.
Please inform me how we’re totally the mirror wing. Platitudes like that which lead to the deaths of thousands give me sardonic grins.
My only “side” is whoever is upholding freedom and justice for all citizens of the US and outside its borders. Frankly the GOP fails to meet even that standard.
@Pendraeg
But is that my stance tho?
PS. I don’t do ‘sides’
From day one my plan has been to treat Trump with the same level of respect that Republicans gave for Obama (there’s a nice viral ‘poem’ going around to this effect). Also, I have no moral qualm with using underhanded tactics to get what we want. So long as I actually acknowledge Republicans to be human beings, I’m morally superior to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5P8G_V5v7g
Vive la résistance!