Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
When former president Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election, left-leaning people across the United States and around the globe vowed to take action to challenge him and the politics they felt he represented – misogynist, racist, grievance-fuelled, and wrapped in a blatant disregard for American democratic norms. The resistance in November, 2016, was immediate and clear. It started with safety pins and grew from there. The day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, on Jan. 21, 2017, between three and five million people joined the Women’s March in cities worldwide. During Mr. Trump’s first administration, large public protests became a central democratic expression of discontent with his policies and rhetoric.
Mass mobilizations are not only symbolically important – they also work. In their groundbreaking research, political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan use over a century of data from across the globe to demonstrate that non-violent resistance movements that mobilize at least 3.5 per cent of a given population have the power to topple dictators. In democratic societies, mass protests serve as an imprecise indicator of a government’s popularity, favourability, and even its ability to pass its agenda.
Eight years later, there just isn’t the same sense of agitation, determination and vocal public resistance to a second Trump presidency. Instead, the tone and tenor of the postelection American left is one of quiet resignation, disappointment, and disillusionment.
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There are some notable exceptions, of course. Mere days after the election, the American Civil Liberties Union took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to write a letter to Mr. Trump, insisting that “we’re not moving to Canada,” and “any attempt to roll back our nation’s civil liberties will be met with the full power of our resistance.” A coalition of over 280 organizations has joined forces under the mantra Democracy 2025 and have begun to prepare litigation to counter harmful, illegal, or anti-democratic moves Mr. Trump may make once he takes office.
Beyond the planning – which began months ago – by networks of Democratic lawmakers and organizations with a mandate and mission to resist right-wing agendas, the broader American public has not responded with the same vigour and conviction as it did in 2016.
For some, the muted sense of urgency is because they voted for Mr. Trump, becoming part of the general rightward shift in all 50 states. This is an important point. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48 per cent of the popular vote, compared with Mr. Trump’s share of 45.9 per cent. The most recent estimates for the 2024 election indicate that Mr. Trump won just shy of 50 per cent of the popular vote, and a margin of victory that might end up being even closer than the highly contested election of Bush v. Gore in 2000.
But for many others, the thought of another four years of a Trump presidency is simply exhausting.
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The timing of our collective fatigue isn’t great. Even in these early days, there is every indication that Mr. Trump will seek to accomplish all that he was constrained from doing during his first term. Mr. Trump has made radical promises about what the next four years will hold: mass deportations, the decimation of the public service, the imposition of tariffs, gutting environmental regulations, eliminating the Department of Education, reshaping the Department of Justice, prosecuting his political adversaries, and so on. His cabinet picks are patronage appointments who are more versed in flattery than experience.
Yet, the lack of protests on the streets should not be taken as signs of complete apathy and disengagement. We can turn the debilitation of this loss into smaller, more deliberate and strategic actions. Issue-based advocacy organizations, such as the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, have vowed to continue the fight. We can look to and support mutual aid organizations to fill in the gaping holes of the social safety net, which are bound to become larger and more dire for the most vulnerable among us. We can keep putting sticky notes on the wall in support of human rights and each other. We can reform our online communities on platforms that are not owned by Elon Musk.
It’s okay to be tired, to regroup, to choose our battles, to rethink priorities as we face another four years of a Trump presidency. Mass protests were a key element of the resistance eight years ago, but they are not the only, or even the most effective, tool in a democratic arsenal. Don’t underestimate the value of small moments and the individual actions of ordinary citizens. That’s the real power of democracy.