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When the camera panned to the audience of Vice President Kamala Harris’ concession speech Wednesday, many of her supporters were literally weeping. Had cameras been able to peer into homes around the country, they probably would have found plenty of tears there, too.
“Sometimes the fight takes a while,” the defeated 2024 Democratic presidential nominee said as she wrapped up her remarks, perhaps with these very people in mind. “That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is, don’t ever give up. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place.”
The plea had a certain poignance, coming as it did from the second woman in a decade to run for the presidency and lose to Donald Trump. It was also delivered in a very different context than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 concession to the Republican. Trump has become more extreme in the intervening years, more unbalanced. His 2024 campaign featured “naked racism and misogyny,” as my colleague Nathalie Baptiste wrote this week, while promising mass deportations of migrants and a radical overhaul of the federal government. Members of his previous administration have even called him a fascist.
Harris wasn’t the only Democratic leader urging resilience in the face of Trump’s victory. “We all get knocked down, but the measure of our character, as my dad would say, is how quickly we get back up,” President Joe Biden stated in a Thursday speech at the White House. “Remember, a defeat does not mean we are defeated.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tinged her plea, delivered over social media, with a warning. “We are about to enter a political period that will have consequences for the rest of our lives. We cannot give up,” she said.
Of course, such exhortations are standard fare in losing political causes: We lost today; we’ll win tomorrow. Keep up the good fight. But those words may be unusually necessary now, because of the vital role that political opposition played after Trump’s last electoral win ― and the open question of whether such opposition will materialize again.
What 2017 Was Like
It’s been almost a decade, so it’s easy to forget the sheer sense of shock that followed Trump’s 2016 election. Many people just couldn’t fathom that Trump could actually win the White House. And then he did.
The immediate effect on the political left was paralysis. But that quickly gave way to anger and determination. An organic backlash took shape ― in small social circles, online and off, until eventually it coalesced into a loosely organized national movement led by groups like the newly formed Indivisible Project.
As Trump took office in 2017, there were airport demonstrations against his travel and immigration restrictions, as well as a march for women’s rights in Washington. When Trump tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, there was an outpouring of opposition at congressional town halls around the country and eventually on Capitol Hill itself.
This pushback almost certainly made a difference. The Obamacare protests helped save the law, which is still around today. Immigration protests changed the politics of the issue in a way that ― as broadcaster Chris Hayes noted recently on MSNBC ― likely forced Trump to back down on family separations later in his term.
The Women’s March on Washington didn’t stop Trump from installing the Supreme Court majority that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide. But it set in place the activist groundwork to keep abortion rights and gender issues in the public eye, and fueled the political wave that elected Democrats in the next two midterms and then Biden in 2020.
What 2025 Could Be Like
Now Trump is on his way back to the White House. This time there’s no shock on the left, or at least not the same kind of shock. Everyone knew he could win, not just because the polls were so close but simply because he had done it before. Many of his opponents had prepared for the possibility months ago, when Biden was still the Democratic nominee and well behind in the polls.
But there are also signs of despair and fatigue, as The New York Times reported Wednesday. Democrats and their allies have been at this for nearly 10 years, fighting Trump and Trumpism, only to be back at the starting line once again.
“The Second American Republic (1868-2024) is over,” Democratic Party advocate and adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn wrote in a letter that ended up on social media, stating what a number of others were saying privately. “I threw everything I had into defending it. That fight is done. … I’m heading back to the private sector.”
In some ways, such resignation is part of a natural process. Some activists and advocates make a career out of promoting their causes. But many will do it for only a time, frequently in their 20s and 30s when they are full of postcollege idealism and relatively unencumbered. Then they move on to other pursuits, a new generation of energetic idealists take their place, and the cycle repeats.
The cycle could keep going — it’s only been a few days — especially if Trump follows through on promises like his mass deportations vow after he takes office next year. The sounds and sights of officers pulling friends and neighbors out of workplaces and homes, and ripping apart families, have the potential to be more polarizing than the images of separated kids that took hold of the American consciousness during Trump’s first term.
It’s even possible that this new generation will have certain advantages. Younger activists may better understand how to fight Trumpism on the terrain where it’s thriving, whether that’s lifestyle podcasts or male-oriented social media platforms. Their willingness to accept Trump and Trumpism as just another part of American politics may help them reach the many voters who quite obviously feel the same way.
And exhausted or not, it’s clear that a lot of the old activists — and quite a few new ones — are already gearing up for the fight.
On Thursday night, a group of progressive organizations including MoveOn.org and the Working Families Party held a virtual meeting led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). Indivisible was also part of the effort. Leah Greenberg, its co-founder and co-executive director, told me metrics showed that more than 137,000 people were on the call and that more than 8,000 signed up as “hosts” for local organizing efforts in the future.
“What we’re hearing from people is both sorrow and determination,” Greenberg said. “And what we are seeing from the metrics is that people who were previously engaged and who are not engaged, they are reengaging. Other people are newly engaging or figuring to ramp up.”
Hope can, of course, be a strategic move. In a video released online after Trump’s win this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — who became the inspiration for a rallying cry during Trump’s first term — didn’t just call for resistance against Trump, but resistance against despair.
“The far right wants us to feel powerless. Extremists are counting on apathy, cynicism, heartbreak or all of the above as their rocket fuel,” she said. “I absolutely refuse to give them that satisfaction.”
Americans will have to wait and see whether the resistance will persist, nevertheless.