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Mary Kramer has lived in a near-total news blackout since Election Day. The Baltimore-area healthcare professional briefly dipped her toe back into the media puddle to watch President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, but quickly returned to limited consumption of the news. Words like “despondent,” “devastated,” and “destroyed” tumble forth as she assesses her reaction to President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to power.
“Eight years ago, I still had hope. I still had the fight in me,” the 65-year-old said Saturday on the north side of the National Mall, where a melange of liberal causes converged in a hodgepodge of a rally just hours before Trump was set to land near Washington to launch his Inauguration festivities. “This weekend is far from the march I attended eight years ago. That had hope and fight.”
She looked around as people milled about in a cold, grey lawn with a Lincoln Memorial under renovation standing as the backdrop for speakers. “This country is just never going to elect a woman,” she said, pointing to Hillary Clinton’s and Kamala Harris’ losses to Trump. “It’s never going to happen, and we need to see it for what it is. I’m of a mind that we are not going to have a Constitution or a democracy by the time this ends. All because we just won’t vote for a woman.”
Almost exactly eight years ago, global capitals teemed with a sense of possibility, and the sunny streets of Washington were packed. On Saturday, it was loosely attended under a drab D.C. drizzle. The Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial was partially iced over. Piles of grey snow sat next to muddy stretches of the lawn. And the tall fencing was a militaristic reminder that Trump will take office in two days, even if his Inauguration ceremony has been moved inside the Capitol in anticipation of frigid temperatures on Monday.
Many of those there seemed to grasp they were in a decided minority as they brace for Trump’s return. They’re equally frustrated with their prospects for mounting any sort of meaningful blockade to Trumpism in a city where his allies control both chambers of Congress and enjoy a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. Whereas the first iteration of The Resistance seemed primed with potential, this facsimile feels far more muted and more than a little like a communal therapy session.
The signs and slogans were familiar. The “We Rise, We Resist, We March” and “Feminists Against Facism” prints have been de rigeur ingredients at this variety of political performance for almost a decade at this point. Others were slightly fresher, with plenty of takes from the legion of Childless Cat Ladies, as Vice President-elect J.D. Vance for some reason decided to slam Trump’s critics. Even so, it was impossible to feel any real confidence that showing up for this rally—which promoted causes at times as varied as environmental justice, Free Palestine, trans rights, and D.C. statehood—would move the needle in any measure beyond affirming the current Left’s belief that intersectionality would save it. The umbrella of the current liberal network proved mighty big, encompassing social and racial identities, niche causes like specific coral reefs, and reproductive and voting rights; it might also be fairly flimsy in the face of MAGA headwinds.
“I am tired. I am exhausted. I am angry,” said Nancy Casavis, sporting both a sweatshirt and hat with vulgar language on them to disparage Trump. The 66-year-old retired special education teacher who now calls The Villages, Fla., home, said she was bracing for a rough four years. “But we cannot sit down and shut up. I don’t want my grandkids thinking what they’re seeing in a Trump universe is OK.” So she held a bevvy of hand-made signs and took snaps that she plans to add to a collection of protest shots she is collecting to give her family members so “they know we were on the right side of this fight.”
To be sure, not everyone was so downtrodden. “I cannot believe that normal people voted for this man. But they did,” said Celia Laurent, a 65-year-old state administrator from the Baltimore area. “Which is why we have to keep marching.”
That said, no one credibly claimed the scaled-down showing matched even the smallest of cities’ demonstrations from just before the first Trump term. “I was here eight years ago. This is 1% of that,” said Anneka Hall, a 54-year-old real estate appraiser who traveled from Clovis, Calif., for the weekend—to attend Trump’s Inauguration. The move of that ceremony into the Capitol Rotunda is a bummer for Hall, whose daughter is a student in the area, but she still planned to go to a Young Republicans event Saturday evening and Trump’s Inauguration Eve rally at the downtown sports arena on Sunday.
Still, standing on a sidewalk overlooking the throng, Hall listened as the speakers ricocheted from topic to topic. “What’s wrong with hearing what the other side is doing and saying? I don’t hate the other side. It’s good to know how radical they’ve gotten.”
In that, she identified perhaps why the Democratic institutionalists were not fighting for spots on the stage, which might as well have been a reel of TikToks for as much deference the crowd gave it. Instead, the festival-roaming atmosphere was more of a safe space for those in a city otherwise full of visitors in red MAGA hats and the occasional U.S. flag doubling as a cape at other tourist spots.
“I feel lost and defeated,” said Esther Vogelzang, a 57-year-old mental health therapist from St. Paul, Minn. “I was worried people wouldn’t show up. But it turns out I am not alone.”
No, not alone. But also not joined by as many as were here eight years earlier. It’s why the second Trump era is going to be much different than the first for Democrats.
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