Left to their own devices

Timothy Shenk, National Fellow, wrote for the Times Literary Supplement about the lasting conflict between members of the Democratic party:

Within hours of news outlets declaring that Donald Trump had been elected President in November 2016, #resist began circulating on Twitter. By December, a Google Doc composed by the former Democratic congressional staffer Ezra Levin had started to make its way among members of the self-described Resistance. “Indivisible: A practical guide for resisting the Trump agenda” offered twenty-three pages of advice – about what to say in a phone call to a senator’s office, where to sit in a town meeting, how to bring together like-minded resisters. One year and some $6 million in fundraising later, Indivisible has a staff of about forty in its Washington headquarters, and more than 6,000 local chapters.

Indivisible is not alone. Money and volunteers have poured into organizations with names like Our Revolution, #KnockEveryDoor, Emerge America, Operation 45, Run for Something, Color of Change, Movement Match and the Pussyhat Project. One (unidentified) long-standing Democratic activist told the New York Times, “The growth in activism that these groups have both spurred and harnessed outstrips anything I have seen in decades previously”. By September 2017, over 400 Democratic House candidates had already raised more than $5,000 for their 2018 campaigns, more than four times the total among Republicans.