The grassroots progressive movement known as the resistance has had a very good two years. It beat back attempts to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, and it helped defeat a Republican House majority that was enabling President Donald Trump. Neither of those outcomes looked likely when he took office.
But the government shutdown has shown the limits of this new progressive movement. The resistance has had virtually no effect on the politics of the shutdown - and a stronger movement could have a big effect.
When I've spoken to people from other countries over the past couple of weeks, they have been shocked that Americans have not begun protesting the shutdown in large numbers. About 800,000 federal workers have now gone almost a month without getting paid. Some are struggling to pay their rent or buy medications. Some have gone to pawnshops to get cash. Major functions of government - airline security, food safety, mortgage processing, farm assistance and so on - have been impaired.
If this were happening in Europe, as Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago told me, people would be pouring into the streets. And yet in the United States, there has been nothing but a few small, scattered rallies.
Instead of lining up to protest, hundreds of federal workers in Washington lined up last week to eat at makeshift soup kitchens. The photos of them doing so were a study in powerlessness.
It's not hard to envision a different scenario. Trump was already an unpopular president before Fox News hosts goaded him in December into rejecting a bipartisan Senate deal to keep the government open. Polls show that most voters correctly blame him for the shutdown. Congressional Democrats are largely united. Republicans are less so, with some publicly signaling their discomfort. They and Trump are the politically vulnerable players in the shutdown.
Imagine if there were a progressive movement strong enough to pressure Trump by highlighting the damage he is doing. What could that look like? Among other things, it could look like a nationwide one-day strike by federal workers.
With even a minority of them participating, it would create huge logistical problems at airports and elsewhere. Americans who support the workers could join them on the picket lines. The day after the strike, the federal workers could return to their jobs, as a sign of their commitment.
Yes, strikes by federal workers are illegal. But requiring people to work without pay may also be illegal, legal scholars have pointed out. Either way, protest movements often use illegal tactics. It's called civil disobedience, and it can succeed when the cause is sympathetic. Federal workers forced to visit pawn shops because of a petulant, wealthy president are pretty sympathetic.
The Trump resistance has been the most hopeful sign of activism in decades. Thousands and thousands of people, mostly women, have been inspired to march, organize, dive into local politics and get out the vote. They have already proven that their activism can make a difference. A lot of Americans owe their health insurance today to this new movement.
But relative to the scale of the country's problems - and the strength of past political movements - the new movement remains too small and too weak. Figuring out how to build it up is a vastly more important question for progressives than, say, figuring out who the ideal 2020 Democratic nominee will be. Get the movement right, and the politicians will follow.
The New York Times