Never Trump didn’t work. Will the #Resistance return?

Not long after Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to announce his bid for president on June 16, 2015, movements to resist him started.
Conservatives who didn’t approve called themselves “Never Trumpers” and progressives started a movement that’s been called the “resistance.” The Lincoln Project is one of the Never Trump groups started by former Republicans that spent millions on ads as well as strategy and research. The anti-Trump ads were certainly aggressive, but the movement didn’t achieve its goal.
Instead, Trump got his second act. Will the “resistance” get theirs?
Trump won the White House again. He also won the popular vote. CNN contributor Scott Jennings called the movement a failure. “This ‘Never-Trump’ whole complex that grew over the last several years, nothing has ever failed as hard in politics as this,” said Jennings.
It’s a point self-identified Never Trumper Ashley Pratte Oates agrees with — she wrote in an opinion piece for U.S. News, “Never Trump Republicans have never looked more like a dead, irrelevant entity.” Oates argued Never Trumpers should defect from the GOP and instead join the Democratic Party.
The face of the Never Trump movement was either former Republicans or current Republicans, but the movement itself attracted Democratic megadonors like Michael Moritz, David Geffen and Stephen Mandel and Democratic dark money groups like Majority Forward.
The Lincoln Project didn’t just work against Trump, it also spent money opposing other Republicans through ad buys. The ad buying, along with the tone and tenor of the group, has led some to suggest the group might not actually be effective at reaching Republicans because they sound too much like Democrats.
Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, called The Lincoln Project, “Democrats in Republican clothing.” In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Olsen was critical of the group’s ad urging voters to vote against 15 Republican senators.
He also thought the group’s leaders “clearly align with Democratic values on questions such as trade, immigration and the internet, and are willing to, at best, overlook Democratic values on matters such as taxes, climate change and religious liberty.”
In other words, Olsen said Republican voters weren’t buying what The Lincoln Project was selling. Olsen isn’t the only one with an observation like this. Ben Jacobs of The New Republic said a fair number of people within the Never Trump movement ended up joining the Democratic Party (and campaigning for other Democrats).
The group faced criticism not only for the substance of what it put out, but also the tone — especially when it came to ads. When Rick Wilson, co-founder of the group, was asked by CBS News if he was concerned about “stooping to the president’s (Trump) level of being mean,” Wilson responded, “I hope so.” He said he thought negative ads worked.
The way Jennings sees it, the group ended up driving Republicans away.
“Republicans being lectured to, condescended to, browbeaten by all these folks over the last — look, at some juncture, it’s OK if we have different opinions about the election,” he said. “You don’t have to beat people to death over it. And the more you do that, the more it drives people away.”
Unlike the Never Trump movement, those who call themselves members of the #Resistance are typically Democrats. But the circumstances have changed from 2020 to now.
In his political comeback, Trump ended up gaining new voters, had strong support from Republicans, expanded his coalition and won all seven battleground states. Though it was a decisive victory for Trump, the country is still polarized. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average on Friday puts Trump’s favorability at 44.2% and unfavorability at 51.6%.
Trump will not run another presidential campaign since he’s headed into his second term. So, will there be a movement like the Never Trump or “resistance” again? It depends on who you ask.
Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said a resistance movement like there was from 2016 onward “isn’t in line with the mood of the country, which now isn’t electrified by politics but exhausted by it.”
“And in some funny way, demonstrations especially would make the Democratic Party look weaker,” said Noonan. “As if it has no other moves. As if it’s trying to avoid something, a sober look inward, and trying to cover it up by chanting.”
On the other hand, Perry Bacon Jr., columnist for The Washington Post, said journalists, activists, officials and everyday Americans should go back to their resistance mode of 2017 to 2020.
And, he wrote, “this resistance can’t be too reliant on Democratic Party leadership.”
Elected officials in blue states have already started mobilizing to confront a Trump presidency. Governors for New York, California and Illinois have said as much, according to Politico.
As an example, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said if Trump violates the law, they are already prepared to file in court. Lisa Kashinsky and Rachel Bluth, authors of the Politico article, said, “Democrats’ rush to reform their resistance to Trump is partly self-serving. Governors and state prosecutors who took on Trump during his first term burnished their national profiles in the process.”
On Thursday, commissioners for Bucks County, Pennsylvania, voted to count ballots that don’t have the proper signatures, even though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had issued a ruling on that earlier this year, The Washington Examiner reported. The legal team for the board had recommended the ballots be rejected.
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want,” said Diane Marseglia, a Democrat and board chair. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
There’s a Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere set for Jan. 18, 2025, after Trump assumes the White House. One was held in Salt Lake City and other cities ahead of the election. While the protest was centered around support for laws allowing access to abortions, KSL.com reported the attendees “overwhelmingly supported Vice President Kamala Harris.” But so far, there’s no buzz suggesting it will be anything like the Women’s March of 2017 where millions descended on Washington, D.C.
With the election in the rearview mirror, some instead see this as time of rebuilding for the Democratic Party.
Writing for The New York Times, George Washington University assistant professor of history Timothy Shenk said he thinks “the Resistance has run into a dead end.” And instead, what Democrats need to do next is debate among themselves to figure out how the party “can plausibly present itself as a champion of ordinary people trying to make a better life in a broken system.”