In the aftermath of Trump’s address to Congress a recent story on Yahoo News (link below) addressed the mood of those opposing Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Trump drew some praise as he behaved more adult than childish.
Variety reported that “while the pundit class may be heaping praise on the performance, Nielsen’s metered market overnight ratings indicate that he likely didn’t draw as big a crowd as his predecessor. Across seven networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC — Trump’s speech notched a 27.8 household rating in those early ratings. Across these same networks, President Obama’s first address of a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009, drew an overnight household rating of 33.4, a difference of about 17%.”
Just because Trump gave a decent address to Congress and won praise for not being his usual callous, crude self is not cause for thinking that anything has fundamentally changed. He will be back calling the press “the enemy of the people” and doing worse within two days.
The story described something it called “Trump Fatigue “as people seek out spaces in their lives that do not revolve around the president’s words or actions. Trump Fatigue is a real thing, but it is as much Bannon Fatigue as anything.
It is a strategy: Attack on every front. It makes it difficult to choose the one focal point for opposition. In their confusion people cannot choose what they most want to accomplish. Those who try to defend everything end up defending nothing. The force is dissipated. It is a common and clever strategy. But, this is a marathon. Not a sprint. Nothing is over. Nothing will ever be over.
The Yahoo News story quoted Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org, address a crowd of demonstrators outside the White House. “We have the truth. We have the Constitution. And we have the large majority of the American people.”
Those are all powerful forces.
Resistance Report: As Trump wins praise, activists try not to get discouraged
Submitted by Mike Pfeifer, WCD Member