You're right. They started the day before with the tea bag campaign...and then just a month later with protests across the country.
I think the problem is that the protests a few days ago were essentially protesting the new president personally rather than protesting any action taken or about to be taken. If you look back at even the early tea party nonsense, it was protesting the 800 billion dollar stimulus which was a large part of increasing the deficit by just shy of a trillion dollars that year over the previous year and would start the cycle of Obama's over a trillion dollar a year deficits until he was stopped by Republicans. Basically what I'm saying here is that there was actual policy being protested, not just the person who was president. With the protests this year, it was all about protesting the person and not about protesting any actual policy that is being pushed. For example, the stimulus that the tea party people were protesting starting the day before Obama took office was introduced in the Senate 14 days before Obama took office. There is no similar legislation in the Senate or House to be protested right now.
I'm not sure how you know who voted for whom, but the DNC did put forth hilary as their candidate that lost to the this guy That's all I'm saying.
Marched in Austin. Took my daughters too, and I think it was a pretty impactful experience for them. I'm glad 4 million people marched if for no other reason my daughters know they marched with 4 million people. I think it's interesting how people have all these reductionist ideas of what people were marching for. I suppose organizers wrote something about it, but how many of the 4 million read it before hitting the streets? I'd say the real uniting thread was that it was a rejection of Trump. But, judging from the signs, there were a lot of ideas jumbled in there. I'd categorize them like this: 1. Women are not just sex objects. With a lot of signs that say something like "This p***y grabs back!" Trump's objectification of women, with the p***y-grabbing quote, the multiple trophy wives, the sexual harassment accusations all feeding into this meme. My favorite here was a simple "Free Melania!" It's funny because it's true. 2. Reproductive rights. Not surprising to see a lot of this. Many ovarian "Come and take it!" signs. Given Trump saying he wanted to defeat Roe v. Wade, and Repubs finally having the pieces to potentially do it, not surprising. Some Christian friends thinks this invalidates the whole march and no Christian should march with a pro-choice advocate. They're upset that pro-life feminists were excluded from the organization. But there were pro-lifers marching. 3. Feminism more generally. "Feminism is the radical idea that women are people." I was struck by the parallels with Black Lives Matter in that both are fighting just to get acknowledgement from society of their worth. The clever one here was "Respect my existence or expect my resistance." I know it's been around for years and it's probably trademarked by somebody. 4. No bigotry. There was a species of signs that didn't limit itself to women's rights issues. Lots of "Love Trumps Hate" and others decrying racism in addition to sexism and other prejudices. 5. Rainbow flags. I don't really remember any gay rights signs, but I do remember a number of rainbow flags. 6. Sympathetic conservatives. I did see a smattering of signs that suggested the marcher wasn't really liberal at all, but sympathized with this protest. "Right or Left, we can all see Wrong" is the one that stuck in my mind. 7. Sympathetic men. There were a ton of men in the march. They mostly carried the usual signs. But, wanted to tip my hat to the guy with the "I make my own sandwiches" sign.
Yes, Clinton was an imperfect candidate no doubt. Could the DNC have put forward a better candidate? Don't know, and that's hindsight anyway. Don't see how Trump's election can be blamed on the DNC, or on Clinton supporters. None of them helped Trump win through the GOP primaries where GOP voters pulled the levers FOR Trump. Nor did Clinton supporters vote for Trump. GOP voters (and some Independents, and some Democrats) voted for Trump. Blaming the DNC and Clinton supporters for Trump would be like blaming the DNC and Humphrey supporters for Nixon. And.. I wonder how many Trump voters are already starting to wonder if they voted correctly. Just as I wonder how many people that didn't vote for Trump are wishing they voted for Clinton.
I do blame the DNC, not for Trump win, but for Clinton loss. There is a fine difference there. The country *was* changing, or has changed. The DNC presumed to know what's best and didn't allow their presumption to be tested on an even playing field. Sure, Clinton might still have won and likely probably still win, but we will never know. We will also never know how many supporters Clinton lost because of voters pissed off about the DNC either. But we do know that it wasn't a level playing field and that has an effect on the DEM side - how big, unsure, but it was there. I personally think the effect was large enough to lose, given the margin of victory in the few critical states were razor thin.
As much as I think the marches were great, I can't help but wonder where these concerned folks were at on November 8th.
I get you. I think both DNC and GOP could have put forth better candidates. At this point, everything about the elections is hindsight. What we have is President Trump now.
Except they were protesting that as well as other specific policies pledged to happen by that person. They also specifically targeted the horrible Secretary of Education. They protested proposed policy ideas of de-funding planned parenthood, removing the rights of LGBT community, etc. There were numerous specific things that were targeted with protests.
Like I said though, there was no specific legislation or policy that is being pushed that they were protesting. They were essentially protesting what could one day maybe happen but hasn't yet had any indication that it will actually happen.....that's not quite as legitimate as protesting a bill that already hit the Senate floor which was the case in 2009. The protests this year were more about general unhappiness with losing the election and not having any control over the direction of the country. Sort of an outpouring of emotion rather than anything substantive.
The Sec. of Education nominee has already happened. And I don't have a problem with being proactive in voicing concerns over promised legislation. Why wait until something bad happens when it could possibly be prevented?
That's just doing mental gymnastics in order to try to justify something clearly not justifiable and you know that the majority of the protests were about Trump personally and not about things that have any traction in the House or Senate. It's pretty clear that they didn't really have anything concrete to protest, but they were upset anyway, so they took to the streets for a public group therapy session. We even had someone in this thread who went out and protested who admitted to that being the purpose It wasn't about any policy that is actually on the table, it was simply a bunch of people upset with who won. There was vastly more "p***y grabbing" related BS than anything of substance, and that pretty much invalidates the whole thing. It wasn't a protest of substance, it was a protest of losing an election to someone they didn't want to lose an election to.
Exactly, if all the four millions of people volunteered to turn out the votes, we might have a different president today, protests are mostly useless, but doing work during elections can change things much easier.
I think once they have something of substance to protest they might be valuable. In many ways the tea party protests led to the Republicans taking power away from Obama just 2 years after his coronation. If Trump or the GOP pushes policy that would give those desperately looking for an excuse to protest something of substance, then it could help sway public opinion to try and take back the house in 2 years. Of course, if they keep protesting without substance, it could have the opposite effect allowing the GOP and Trump to actually gain seats in 2 years.
Well, Clinton did win 3 million more votes...She won plenty of votes. The people marching were in all pretty liberal cities like LA, New York, etc etc...so you really can't say that those people didn't vote. It's not that they didn't vote, it's that their votes didn't count as much because of where they lived.
Tea party is not successful just because of their protests, they put up their own candidates, got tons of the protesters to donate time and money to wipe out moderate Republicans. We will see how much money and how many of the four million people volunteer the next election.
In fairness, folks in DC, NYC, Chicago, SF, LA and other places where these marches happened probably did vote strongly against Trump.
We had people marching here in Indianan, yes Indiana. I am sure there are people marching in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, etc, they could easily have swung those states.
