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.
@Pendraeg
GOP: $12
Dems: no, $15
GOP: $13.50
Dems: no, $15
GOP: $14.25, final offer
Dems: deal
Summat like that
That’s an… interesting reading of my words
And people wonder why I put scare apostrophes around ‘right’ and ‘left’
It’s an ethical conundrum to be sure, but it’s worth asking whether it’s the behavior that is actually inethical or the goals. Obviously, we didn’t like the goals of the Tea Party in particular and conservatives generally, and their tactics worked very well toward accomplishing them. Is it possible that we’ve conflated our revulsion with the goals with their tactics? After all, one could argue that even obstructing beneficial legislation that is proposed by the GOP could be more beneficial in the long-term if it hastened a turnover to a much more friendly government to our policies, whereas taking the GOP’s scraps could give them just enough goodwill that they manage to hold onto power as they run us into the ground. It’s a cynical political strategy, true, but maybe there’s some merit in it?
@WWTH Again for the sixth time now, yes we should fight, yes we should use the bully pulpit when it’s available. But that doesn’t mean we should try to force our beliefs on others, we should attempt to convince them that we’re right because we are. That’s all I’m saying. A lot of people seem to think I’m saying we should just roll over, and I’m not.
@Policy “If you want to emulate the forgotten and the ignored, feel free, but stop trying to convince everyone else to step along the path of failure with you.”
No I won’t. Because I don’t believe that it’s the path of failure, I believe it’s the path that will result in long term change for the better and yours will result in a great deal of sound and fury and ultimately not accomplish anything. Of course I’m not going to demand that you stop trying to convince me or anyone because I actually believe that my ideas are better and will win out over yours.
@Michael Brew It is cynical and that’s the problem, you’d be saying to those people that their pain is less important than your political goals. Do you really think that’ll win them to your side and how likely is that turn over if you’ve done that? It might win you a short term victory but long term that seems like losing strategy to me as well as unethical since at that point you’d be putting political goals over people’s well being.
@Policy How about we make sure we don’t come to that bridge in the first place. It’s a bad bridge, why the hell would we take a road that leads to it?
@Axecaliber Then you’re not going obstructing, you’re negotiating, which is pretty fundamentally different stance than the one you were just claiming.
It’s a bit of an extreme on I’ll admit, but do you see how it’s not exactly an impossible or even really very far of a leap?
Put as many scare quotes as you like, but left and right have established meanings in the context of the American political landscape, without those shared definitions discussion is pretty much impossible because you’d have to reestablish basic vocabulary.
A well-rounded article advocating the same strategy (and answering a bit to Pendraeg’s view, though I doubt they’ll be convinced): It’s time for Democrats to fight dirty, by David Faris (via Brute Reason).
Okay that’s weird my response to Michael is posting above his even though the time stamp is after it.
Lyndon B Johnson was kind of an asshole and he twisted a lot of arms to get the Civil Rights Act passed.
Franklin Roosevelt appointed extra Supreme Court Justices to make sure his agenda for getting us out of the depression passed.
They went to extreme measures to get really necessary progressive changes through and the country is better off for it. We would have had a better health care reform bill if Barrack Obama had been willing to be more of a shady asshole IMO. I’d prefer it if being nice worked. I really would. But it doesn’t. We’re not going to get progressive reforms passed in the near future unfortunately, but we can shut Trump the fuck down. If he and the GOP congress get nothing done, the voters will blame them, not the Democrats. The media will blame Trump. That’s how it works. People claim they want politics to be nicer, but it’s all talk. If the Dems want victory in 2018 and 2020, voters need to see them fight and fight hard.
@sff9 It’s an interesting article and again I’m not actually saying that such tactics are ineffective, at least in the short term. What I’m saying is that there’s a better way. Instead of just preventing anything from happening work to help people and work to stop them from being hurt and then scream from the rafters, “This is what we did! This is how we helped you! This is how they hurt you! ” One of my main complaints about Obama is that he didn’t use the bully pulpit to trumpet his victories, but there’s a difference between fighting hard and fighting dirty. And yes I do believe that fighting hard has better and more long term effects than fighting dirty.
@WWTH And we’ll never know if those good things could have been accomplished without using fucked up, and unethical tactics.
I don’t care about polite, I care about principled and ethical neither of which are synonyms for polite. People say they want politics not to be nicer but to be more honest and more transparent and more ethical. I don’t think it’s all talk, look at Sanders here’s a virtual unknown who didn’t engage in the usual sleazy tactics and was able to almost defeat one of the most well known figures in American politics. Now imagine if the entire Democratic party behaved like that. Do you really think it would have no effect, do you really think we shouldn’t demand that they act better and not worse?
In any case it’s time for me to log off for the night, and I do want to say I’m not trying to infuriate anyone, I’m not trying to insult anyone and I don’t think I’ve been disrespectful. I do enjoy these sorts of discussions and I do think it’s important to hear the opinions of people we don’t agree with is all.
Look, em… I don’t think using those tactics makes anyone “the same as” the gun-toting open fascists they’re fighting back against.
@Pendraeg
As did Republicans. 98%, remember? Obstruction is negotiation minus regular concession. If you concede a little bit, only at the end, that’s the Tea Party playbook. Which we call obstruction. Not because it’s fundamentally different than negotiation, but cos it’s annoying. There is 1 other difference tho. An obstructor understands that one can win on the minimum wage by sticking to one’s guns, but lose out on civil rights doing the same. Or vice versa. How willing one is to take that loss, makes or breaks an obstructionist gameplan. Not sure how willing I am at the moment, but I fear I’ll need to be. And it is a fear
Leap from what? Or to what? Not sure what you’re saying there
Oh, I shall
I beg to differ. I find specificity makes political conversation easier and better
The strategy is actually meant to be the opposite of what you suggest. Obstructing even policies that would be beneficial to us is a short term loss for a long term benefit. The argument, as I see it, would be that compromising with the GOP would get us some small benefits, but would also benefit them and ensure that they stay in power longer, while they basically trash the country. Obstructing everything is more likely to result in an upheaval similar to what happened in 2010 and perhaps could break the streak of incumbent presidents always winning reelections. That way, even though we had to delay our own satisfaction on the few scraps sent out way, we stop the worst of the GOP’s excesses and get the power to push through more changes sooner than we would have if we let the GOP look competent enough to not get voted out. So, basically, yes we sacrifice a reasonable health care reform bill this year, but next year we have the power to pass an even better one plus education, etc. where if we had taken the reasonable bill it might have resulted in four more years of running up the debt, ruining the environment, and gutting other public services.
The Tea Party worked well because it didn’t have any particular unifying ideology other than being anti-Obama (even when he supported policies that went in a moderate or conservative direction). It never demanded that members be a particular type of conservative or libertarian as long as they refused to collaborate with Obama’s agenda or Republicans who failed to be sufficiently anti-Obama.
You’d be accepted as long as you went along with the clearly defined goals of blocking Obama’s agenda and making life hell for Republicans who cooperated with Obama. Many people in the Tea Party (at least in my experience) had more liberal views on issues like gay rights, the War on Drugs, and privacy and civil liberties. So the takeaway is to accept everyone willing to work towards a clearly defined goal even if they don’t agree on fundamental issues.
We’re all familiar with the adage that the ends don’t justify the means, which seems to be what @Pendraeg is hung up on. But using “good” means won’t necessarily lead to “good” ends (I do hear they’re great at paving roads to hell, OTOH), and the fact that someone used certain tactics for harmful goals doesn’t automatically define their tactics as “bad.”
The “will of the people” can lead to terrible outcomes, because people support awful shit. That doesn’t make democracy bad. However, it also doesn’t mean we have to support any and all democratically derived laws, especially when they’re terrible. Slavery was–and in some places still is–the will of the people. Marital rape was–and in some places still is–the will of the people. Anti-LGBT discrimination remains the will of the people all over the damn place. Lack of medical care, food, and housing for the most vulnerable is the will of the people right now. Shouting from the rooftops and doing everything I can to prevent our democratically elected representatives from causing horrific suffering is part of the democratic process too and I intend to do it until I don’t have a voice any longer, at which point I will resort to angry gestures and memes.
Democracy is the best political system we have for protecting people–their lives and their freedom–but democracy is just a tool. If 51% of the USA felt that murdering a minority was a good idea, I would die fighting that and would not give a good goddamn about how democratically they’d arrived at the decision.
Progressives need to defend people, not the “right” political tactics. We need food and medical care and education and safety and all those other fantastic things. Focus on human rights and you don’t have to fret over whether or not someone naughty used the same tactics, because–hey!–everybody’s human rights are being protected. Which should be our goal.
(I think this is my first comment here? Hi?)
Anyone who thinks that the GOP is going to suggest policies that benefit all people (such as universal healthcare) hasn’t been paying attention to the GOP for the last two decades.
I think the “means vs. ends” question ignores the system in which those means and ends take place.
Right now, Republicans have broken the system of US government. They have made obstructionism, strong arm tactics and the suppression of democracy the fundamental tactics of their rule. Regardless of whether the Democratic party upholds the norms and standards of American democracy, there is no way to force the Republican Party to do so in the current system.
The system must be changed, and that can’t happen if one side clings to a power structure to which they are at a systemic disadvantage. In the end, one of two things will happen: the system will be fixed, or it will be destroyed in favour of something new. Hanging onto the broken system will only delay the inevitable.
So, the Democratic party should resist the same way the Republicans did. Force the issue, instead of pretending everything’s ok. Academics and activists can focus on fixing the systemic issues, and be wary of the Republican attempts to solidify one-party rule in the face of such opposition.
Your argument is that, because we might come to a bad bridge, we shouldn’t bother to step down any roads at all. Because your ideas are the path of failure. They have failed Democrats over and over, and they failed moderate Republicans who were perfectly happy to compromise with Obama. Nobody thinks those people exist anymore, and in the political realm they don’t, because they were drummed out by the Tea Party and those like them. They lost. Democrats also lose with this method. Your method has a track record of total failure, and your only argument for why we should again take this road to failure is that there MIGHT be a bad bridge along it somewhere.
Fuck me running, dude. Go fail on your own.
Sure we do. Nothing that major has gone through without them. I can’t prove there isn’t an invisible dragon in my garage but…
Heh.
Though re: the gay rights issue, the GOP took advantage of ignorance to a large degree. A few studies show that most people believe that it’s already illegal federally to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. The reality is that in many red states your boss can fire you simply because you’re gay, even though most people in the country would oppose that.
Okay…that’s not what Axe implied at all?
Maybe they’d understand better if they knew just how often progressive movements fucked over black people to get their way…And that Axe is black. I think Sir Gawain here is arguing from a place where they (probably) think Axe is white and throwing a hissy fit over weed legalization or something equally as trivial.
This is what happens when you’re arguing anonymously on the internet and think only white people are about. (And I’m pretty sure they’re white themselves with all the Arthurian shit.)
The Civil War, the Suffrage Movement, anti-Vietnam protests–lots of big examples of white people with liberal-leaning agendas using black people and people of color in general as leverage to get their way and then throwing them under the bus when they’ve got it.
@Jack
http://gifsec.com/wp-content/uploads/GIF/2014/09/You-got-it-bro-GIF.gif
Thanks, homie. I was gonna say, but then I was like ‘nah, let’s see where this goes. When they gonna figure out I’m the expendable one?’
@Axe
I just wonder if they’re ignorant or if they don’t care? Honestly, with the way you phrased it, if they knew anything about what white people with liberal-leaning agendas like to do, they could have probably guess that you were black, latinx, asian, gay, trans, disabled, muslim, jewish…
Pendraeg
You’re completely and utterly wrong. Fascists, Nazis and the rest of them were not defeated on the live or die battlefields of Russia, Europe, Africa and Asia by armies and navies of opposing troops being “better people”. They did it by fighting harder and longer and, eventually winning.
Then, and only then, they had the chance to show the better nature of the politics of non-fascist countries and citizens. Up until then, they were competing as armed forces and countries at war. Tactics – all of them. Sneaky underhanded stuff, gonzo demonstrations of overwhelming force, rationing everything from sugar to shoe leather, jungle fighting tree by tree, clever use of new technologies like radar, nuclear bombs, propaganda both in friendly and enemy territories, ghastly firebombing of civilian populations.
Once the fighting was over and most of the dead were buried, reconstruction, the Marshall Plan, support and relocation of millions of refugees and, after a while, things started to get better. (And everyone had a bit of a shudder and a shiver looking at how badly Stalin behaved. Thinking just how much worse it would have been if Hitler and the rest of the filthy fascists had had their way was enough to bring the nightmares back.)
When you fight, you fight. You don’t hang back for fear of damaging your immaculate appearance. If the battle is on the beaches – say escorts at Planned Parenthood – you do that. If another front opens with plans for CCTV inside mosques, put on your boots, march till you drop, raise your resistance fist. Never, never, ever give up.
With any luck, a decent program of turning over the legislative rocks will, at long last, expose the creepy ALEC agenda to the sunlight and scorn of general public horror in all the states they seem to be taking over. Boycott every single product of every single company that contributes to these creeps. Make sure that everyone knows that Lazy Local Republican Loser did not burn the midnight oil coming up with his personal proposal for anti-gay legislation. He’s just using boilerplate copy and paste from ALEC … again.
It’s true that there are rules of conduct for warfare, seemingly more well recognised in the breach than the observance. Perhaps progressives should have tighter limits and firmer boundaries than the wannabe-fascists. That does not mean that they should always recoil in horror at the merest suggestion of using unfamiliar or unpleasant tactics.