The Womens Marches Could Have More Lasting Consequences Than the Government Shutdown

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-womens-marches-could-have-more-lasting-consequences-than-the-government-shutdown

The Women’s Marches Could Have More Lasting Consequences Than the Government Shutdown
By John Cassidy
9:27 A.M.
Protests like the one on Sunday in Las Vegas represent a phenomenon that is more consequential than a shutdown: a rare popular mobilization against a sitting President.


Among most members of the media, the biggest political story of the weekend was the government shutdown and the standoff on Capitol Hill, which continued on Monday morning despite some signs of progress toward a resolution. On Sunday night, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, proposed a three-week spending bill to reopen the government, and he assured Democrats that he would take up bipartisan immigration legislation on February 8th if no agreement was reached in the interim. However, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said that no deal had been reached on a path forward, and it isn’t clear how many Democrats will accede to McConnell’s plan when he brings forward a procedural vote today at noon.

The machinations on Capitol Hill are obviously newsworthy. But in historical terms, the hundreds of women’s marches that took place across the country on Saturday and Sunday were arguably of greater importance—and they deserved much more coverage than they received. Since neither party stands to gain much from an extended government shutdown, the impasse will probably be resolved within a short time frame. The marches represented the latest manifestation of a phenomenon that is more lasting, and, ultimately, more consequential: a rare popular mobilization against a sitting President.

Although there are no wholly reliable figures, it seems certain that well over a million people marched on Saturday. Unlike last year, when the focus was an event in Washington, D.C., the biggest protests this year took place in other cities, with Los Angeles taking the prize for the biggest march of all. According to Eric Garcetti, the city’s mayor, about six hundred thousand people took part. Here in New York, the mayor’s office estimated that at least two hundred thousand people marched down Central Park West and Sixth Avenue. There were five-figure crowds in Chicago and Philadelphia, too. Equally impressive was the turnout in smaller cities, such as Austin, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina; Boise, Idaho; and Knoxville, Tennessee. On Sunday, the protests continued, with marches in other cities and a big rally at a football stadium in Las Vegas.

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However the shutdown gets resolved, this emerging constituency, which believes the Trump Presidency represents a national emergency, isn’t going anywhere, except to the next protest or political meeting. Just as the Tea Party provided the Republican Party of 2010 with the organizers and doorbell-ringers that are so important in off-year elections, many of the attendees at this weekend’s women’s marches will be working from now until November to turn Trump into a lame duck. Their attitude, defiant and determined, was summed by a pair of signs held by two marchers in Washington, D.C., The signs said: “GRAB ‘EM BY THE MIDTERMS.”