New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks is wrong in his January 24 column, "After the Women’s March." He says the movement that the Women's March embodied will come to nothing because it lacks "the discipline of party politics." Movements, he says, sometimes lead to social change. The civil rights movement did so. But most movements "devolve into mere feeling, especially in our age of expressive individualism."
He's wrong about that. That isn't going to happen this time, simply because Trump is so odious. He represents such a threat to the marchers, their loved ones, and their various causes that they will organize anti-Trump resistance over the long haul and from the ground up. They will use social media and leverage their online presence, but they will also keep up the personal, face-to-face contacts that began at the marches and demonstrations. If they don't, the alternative is just too dire.
The reason David Brooks is wrong is that he is viewing all this from the point of view of the old paradigm, the one in which party politics was the royal road to change. That used to be so, but this is a new paradigm. The new paradigm began with Trump's campaign and election. Trump sidestepped the old paradigm entirely. He won, not the popular vote but the electoral vote. He's now living in the White House.
Meanwhile, there's real doubt about the future of the Democratic Party. Unless the spirit and symbolism of the Women's March can infuse itself into the Democrats, the party is doomed. I think that spirit will infuse itself into the party, as motivated marchers get involved in local and state politics. This is like what happened with the Tea Party and the Republicans early in the Obama administration — only it's much, much bigger.
