With Donald Trump prevailing Tuesday night, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart delivered a memorable message to an audience that was deeply disappointed. “We’re all going to have to wake up tomorrow morning and work really hard to bring the world to the place we want it to be,” he said on “The Daily Show.”
The celebrated host and comedian added, “I promise you this is not the end. And we must regroup, and we must keep fighting and keep working, day in and day out, to create a better society for our children, for this world, for this country that we know is possible. It is possible.”
The sentiment was not unusual. Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped run Kamala Harris’ campaign, told her colleagues in a statement: “I’ll leave you with this: Losing is unfathomably painful. It’s hard. This will take a long time to process. But the work to protect America from the consequences of a Trump presidency begins now.” A few hours later, the Democratic vice president himself told supporters in a concession speech that the “fight that ignited this campaign” will continue.
The overlapping messages emphasized the same point: stay engaged. Stay active. Resist the urge to withdraw. You can still make a difference.
However, some are apparently not convinced. The New York Times reported:
After Mr. Trump became president in 2016, many Americans who had opposed him became committed activists. They used Facebook to organize marches, joined protests against his policies and formed new organizations to recruit liberal candidates for office. Now that Mr. Trump has been re-elected president and prepares to lead a still-divided country that this time voted more decisively in his favor, many of those same people are wondering if they can muster the strength to do it all – or even part of it – again.
To be fair, much of this is anecdotal, and predictions about what people will feel and do in the near future – while the pain of defeat is still raw – are often unreliable.
But from my limited perspective, I’ve heard from some exhausted and disgusted people who were not only disappointed by the election results, but also wondering whether they should just withdraw from politics altogether. If Americans are willing to voluntarily elect an erratic criminal who has already failed as president once and who has been denounced as a “fascist” by members of his own team, what is the point? Why, they wondered, should people continue to operate in a system that appears to be seriously broken?
I’m not going to write a pep talk. I’m not going to point to some of this week’s Democratic victories as part of a pitch that isn’t that bad. I’m not going to reference Tim Snyder’s “On Tyranny,” about the importance of not pre-obeying when faced with an authoritarian.
I’m not even going to remind people that Trump wants little more than for those who opposed him to simply leave the arena and leave politics to those who share his vision and values.
However, I’m going to remind you of a bit of recent history.
Eight years ago, it was a foregone conclusion at this point that Republicans would repeal the Affordable Care Act as part of an expansive and far-right legislative agenda. That didn’t happen, because a lot of people did their best to make sure it didn’t happen.
Yes, Republicans passed ineffective tax breaks for billionaires, but the rest of his legislative agenda stalled — and then Democrats took back the House of Representatives two years into Trump’s term.
The Republican Party failed in 2017 and 2018 for several reasons, but one of them was the political pressure exerted by those who thought they were wrong.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes had a good segment along these lines last week — before we knew the outcome of the election, of course — noting Trump’s first-term failures in the face of progressive activism. While conceding that the Republican would be more dangerous in a second term, Chris explained that there will still be opportunities for ordinary Americans to once again try to stop Trump from pursuing cruel and dangerous goals.
“I must emphasize that the other democratic mechanisms we have to protect ourselves and protect American democracy still exist,” Hayes added. “Civil society does not dissolve in the blink of an eye because someone wins an election – even a wannabe authoritarian.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
