Just how impotent are the Democrats?

Checking in on "the resistance"

On yesterday’s NPR Politics Podcast, my colleague Barbara Sprunt discussed her reporting on what Democrats can - and largely can’t - do to push back against President Trump’s policies, with Republicans in control of Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

She noted that many rank-and-file Democratic voters have been frustrated by a perceived inaction from their party, highlighted by these recent remarks from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

"I'm trying to figure out what leverage we actually have,” Jeffries said. “What leverage do we have? Republicans have repeatedly lectured America — they control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It's their government."

“What leverage do we have?” is, shall we say, not exactly what many Democrats want to hear from their leadership at a moment when the Trump and Republican leaders are freezing federal programs, proposing cuts to Medicaid, and much more.

“It may not be going over well” with Democrats, Barbara told us, “but it is the reality that Democrats face. Elections do have consequences.”

Consequences that are just beginning to be felt.

As Barbara reported, some centrists Democrats such as Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, are calling on their colleagues to fight back by developing “a credible narrative to what we're going to do instead of Trump, while at the same time pounding him for the terrible stuff that he is doing.”

Opponents of Trump’s policies are also trying to push back in the courts, in repeated tests of the Constitutional system of checks and balances.

The podcast conversation reminded me of my colleague Elena Moore’s reporting last month on the exhaustion also felt at the grassroots level, as activists face another Trump administration.

As Elena reported, the estimated crowd at an anti-Trump march tied to his inauguration was about a tenth of the size of the one that turned out to oppose Trump eight years earlier. Meanwhile, “multiple protesters and organizers spoke about feeling tired or knowing others in their community who felt resigned following Trump's decisive win in the fall.”

I had reported on some of the “resistance” to Trump eight years ago, including the massive Women’s March on Washington, D.C. in 2017, and efforts by groups like Indivisible to organize grassroots activists.

Since then, the progressive movement has been plagued by internal divisions - including accusations of racism and antisemitism at the Women’s March. And Democrats have struggled to compete with Trump’s messaging to the working class.

For her story, Elena caught up with a Virginia activist, Larry Stopper, whom I’d interviewed eight years ago when he was first rallying activists against Trump.

Stopper finds national politics increasingly discouraging (“I’ve been defeated,” he told Elena of Trump’s re-election. So, he’s turned his focus away from Washington, to local organizing.

"I have learned through marching and marching and marching and watching what happens after we march that it doesn't change a thing," he said. "If I want to change things, I have to do something that can affect change, and marching is not it."