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Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Hmm. I fear Yglesias is right...
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This a rather muddled article. There really isn't any reason to cite Watergate, as Yglesias himself acknowledges when he reminds us how different the political climate of today is from the political climate of 1974.
What brought Nixon down in 1974 could very well bring Trump down in 2020. But that has little to do with protests, and everything to do with political maneuvering.
I think Yglesias is attempting to argue that protests might enable politicians to act against Trump. Specifically, that'd be a number of GOP senators, as they are the only political actors who matter in the impeachment. This is a bit fanciful. Those people are only going to be swayed by their voters primarily, the existence of really bad facts (I mean seriously bad), and the lack of a credible defenses. The standard most R senators will apply will be something far above beyond a reasonable doubt. It will be more along the lines of, "guilt absolutely proven, without any other plausible explanation."
Protestors are not going to move the dial with these senators any more than Occupy moved the dial on Wall Street malfeasance or wealth inequality.
First, the voters at issue are dispersed. For an R senator to think he or she were in peril, significant unique protests would have to take place in each of their states. That's impossible to organize.
Second, not enough people care about this issue to even protest in significant numbers in Washington. Occupy and Vietnam protests recurred and grew because people had skin in the game. People's economic futures and the possibility of dying in a mindless foreign war are compelling. On the other hand, marching to unseat a "lawless" President? You'll get a few hundred thousand once or twice. The typical pros who show up to protest things. But beyond that, few are going to invest the significant time and travel required. Of the small minority of the public educated enough to understand the situation, most look at it cynically, assuming its just politics, and it'll will work itself out. These people also have other shit to do. They have schedules. People who go to protests have a thing a typical successful educated person does not: Free Time.
I'm not going to list the reasons successful protests in Spain and Iceland differ from the protests Yglesias contemplates. I assume those are obvious. What I will say is that most protests do not succeed. Even the most noble ones seeking to unseat truly repressive regimes, like the Green Revolution in Iran, and Tianenmen Square, tend to fail. Hong Kong is a happy example of one that has succeeded, but again, there the people had serious skin in the game. The Chinese sought to defy the intent of the "two system" structure and send people to the mainland for criminal trials.
To Yglesias, Trump's an existential threat. Maybe he's right. But not enough people agree with him to spend the time and energy to protest at the level needed. Yglesias is a smart guy, and he's writing to informed people. But I think for those reasons, he's in a bit of a bubble. He grossly overestimates the percentage of Americans exercised about Trump's malfeasance and sophisticated enough to even understand why Trump may be impeached. This could change, of course, if something like
Roe's overturning, or Trump asking for re-institution of the draft, were to occur, or if some horrible 2008 scenario replayed. Then, faced with immediately loss of their own money, or rights, people would protest. But mass protests for the nebulous concept that a President must face justice for abusing his power for political advantage? That's not going to happen at anywhere near the level required to make a difference.
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