The Resistance is Tired and in Retreat

We all remember the resistance. That was the name given to the elected Democrats and media figures who spent Trump’s first term determined to bring him down. They never did manage it but they did keep trying, day after day.

There are signs that Trump’s overwhelming win last week, in an election that was expected to be close, has taken the wind out of the resistance’s sails. MSNBC, which was really media central for the resistance during Trump’s first term, has lost about half of its prime time viewers over the last week.

Some left wing voices and media outlets have decided to abandon X and try to find a safe space where they won’t be contradicted. Outspoken left-wing author Stephen King just announced his departure.

I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic. Follow me on Threads, if you like.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 14, 2024

And there are other signs that the left is tired and in retreat.

The aftermath of the 2016 election gave the publishing industry its own “Trump bump,” as a glut of hostile tomes about the new president flew off shelves in blue-state bookstores. Maybe not this time, says one D.C. literary agent specializing in political books, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid running down the business.

“I talked to a dozen editors last week to check in with them and to see what they were planning to do for political books in a Trump era. They were all exhausted at the thought of doing more anti-Trump books,” the agent said. “It’s like walking out of the stadium in the fourth quarter when your team is down and they played like shit all day. … No one has the energy to go through another four years of publishing this stuff even though the first four years were very good for publishers.”

Where Trump’s first victory triggered blue America’s fight instinct, the aftermath of this year’s win is looking a lot more like flight.

Why is the left reacting differently this time. Politico’s Michael Shaffer argues that in 2016 the left convinced itself it had been robbed. You may remember the long list of excuses Hillary Clinton offered for her loss, everything from media coverage of her emails to James Comey’s announcement to Russian interference to voter suppression to misogyny and on and on. Democrats felt they were righteous and justified to try to wreck Trump for taking what they felt rightfully belonged to them (power, the White House, etc.). This time around the scale of the victory doesn’t allow for that sort of self-delusion.

This time, there’s no menacing foreign power to expose, archaic Constitutional provision to bemoan or bumbling FBI director to blame. And there’s no sense of anomaly, either. The people, in their wisdom, made Trump the legitimate president…

No wonder no one’s talking about a million-person march on Washington. The major protest planned around Trump’s second inauguration filed a permit application projecting about 50,000 participants, roughly five percent of the 2017 Women’s March.

Finally, Shaffer makes the case that the 2016 era resistance didn’t work out very well for Democrats. Sure they impeached Trump twice and held some huge protests. They elected Biden as a rebuke to Trump, but what did it get them? Inflation, an immigration crisis, a president who can’t speak a coherent sentence, brat summer and a big surprise last Tuesday when it all collapsed. If that’s success, no wonder so many Democrats are just walking away from resistance 2.0.