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She was constructed as a rallying symbol for protesting students in Tiananmen Square. And when the tanks came rolling in, the Goddess of Democracy crashed to the ground.

She was the symbol of a movement.

On May 30, 1989, 10 art students unveiled the Goddess of Democracy in the middle of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. She stood 30-feet tall, her arms raised to hold her torch high, her eyes staring unwaveringly into those of Mao Zedong, whose portrait hung on the opposite building. The statue rallied the flagging protestors, helping them to reinvigorate their pro-democracy movement in the face of exhaustion and government opposition.

And then, five days later, she watched as hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers invaded the camp, shooting down students and ultimately bringing down the goddess herself.

The protests had started two months earlier, in mid-April, after the death of Hu Yaobang, a Chinese politician who had been forced to resign from his position two years earlier over criticism that he was too sympathetic toward students and intellectuals.

While the movement would eventually end with a bloody roar in Beijing, protests were launched in several cities throughout the country.

For nearly two months, students, intellectuals, journalists, and others who sympathized with the activists call for greater rights and government transparency staged protests and boycotts.

In Beijing, these activities centered around Tiananmen Square, the site of many of the countrys most important historical events, from Maos creation of the Peoples Republic in 1949 to earlier student protests dating back to 1919.

The 1989 protests had launched with the force of the students passionate convictions, but, by the end of May, they were starting to wind down.

The students and their supporters were tired. They had put themselves on the line, their lives on hold, for months, and their initial energy and zeal was starting to leech away as more and more people left the square. There were murmurings that it all might be coming to an end.

But not everyone was ready to give up the fight. In a piece written on May 30, 1989, The Wall Street Journal reported that a core group of students had hoped they could keep the protests going through June 20, when the standing committee of the National Peoples Congress was scheduled to meet. But in order to do that, they needed a rallying cry to unite and reinvigorate the movement. They needed a piece of arta symbolthat would represent what they were fighting for.

Over four days and nights, 10 students from Beijings Central Academy of Fine Arts got to work building a statue that would do just that.

The result was a towering white statue of a woman, her one-shoulder dress artfully draped down her body. Her left arm reached across her chest to grasp the bottom of the torch held high in her righta two-handed grip on the flame of democracy.

Her hair billowed out to one side and her facewhich was detailed with Western featuresgazed determinedly over the crowd.

The artists made the choice to construct the statue out of plaster and Styrofoam, a decision that may be attributed partly to speed, but one that also had another benefitthe massive structure would be harder to dismantle.

The students regard the statue as a public relations coup: either it will remain and symbolize the democracy movement and official weakness; or the authorities will be in the embarrassing position of sending the police to attack the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom with sledgehammers, Nicholas Kristoff wrote in The New York Times on May 30, 1989.

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On the night of May 30, the remaining protestors in Tiananmen Square became curious when they noticed a wooden scaffolding being built in the middle of the square. Soon after, a crew of tricycle carts came riding into the courtyard, ferrying sections of the goddess from the art school to her new home. It took all night, but piece-by-piece, the Goddess of Democracy took shape.

Reporter Steve Futterman was on the scene that night covering the events of the protest. In a 2009 article on The Huffington Post, he recounted watching this momentous event unfold. It was a slow, arduous process, yet virtually no one left the square, so enraptured were they by the power if [sic] this papier-mch Goddess. The crowd cheered each time a new section was put in place.

The reaction was immediate. Futterman remembers that tens of thousands of ordinary Beijing citizens, people who had played no active role in the protests, quickly flocked to the square to see the statue.

She signifies hope for China, 22-year-old Y. H. Yang told The New York Times. But shes behind schedule in reaching the square, and shes coming by tricycle. That is symbolic of the slowness and backwardness of the democratization process in China.

This new symbol injected a fresh wave of hope and energy into the movement. Tiananmen Square filled back up and the protest enjoyed a new sense of resolve, one bolstered by the tall white beacon of democracy standing vigil in their center.

The Chinese government, predictably, was not so moved. They called the artistic expression an abomination and reiterated that this is China, not America, a fact that surely did not need to be reiterated to those who had given the previous couple of months to the fight for democracy.

But less than four days later, the government decided to intervene and end the stand-off. Premier Li Peng ordered tanks and thousands of soldiers to break up the protestors Tiananmen Square camp on the night of June 3 and into the next day.

There were reports that locals rushed into the streets to try to slow down the soldiers and provide a barricade for the students. But they were no match for the military force, which began firing into the crowds.

To this day, the exact number who lost their lives in the Tiananmen Square Massacre is unknown. Estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands, with thousands more injured and arrested.

Among the death toll that night was the Goddess of Democracy. Her end was televised as a tank rammed into her base and the statue toppled over, face forward.

While the government ultimately prevailed that day, the Goddess of Democracy remains a symbol of the freedom that the Chinese students were fighting for during those protests over two decades ago.

In the following years, cities and countries around the world, from Hong Kong to Canada to San Francisco, constructed replicas of the statue in their own public spaces.

But the Goddess of Democracy remains banished from Chinaat least for now.

The 10 artists knew their plaster and Styrofoam creation wouldnt last forever. In a statement they issued when the statue was unveiled, they revealed their hopes that a more permanent replacement would eventually be created.

On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last, they wrote. In the meantime, they implored, Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts!

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The Fate of China's Democracy Goddess - Daily Beast

By Brian Klaas By Brian Klaas February 10 at 4:13 PM

Brian Klaas is a Fellow in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and author of The Despots Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy.

There is an enormous paradox at the heart of American democracy. Congress is deeply and stubbornly unpopular. On average, between 10 and 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress on a par with public support for traffic jams and cockroaches. And yet, in the 2016 election, only eight incumbents eight out of a body of 435 representatives were defeated at the polls.

If there is one silver bullet that could fix American democracy, its getting rid of gerrymandering the now commonplace practice of drawing electoral districts in a distorted way for partisan gain. Its also one of a dwindling number of issues that principled citizens Democrat and Republican should be able to agree on. Indeed, polls confirm that an overwhelming majority of Americans of all stripes oppose gerrymandering.

In the 2016 elections for the House of Representatives, the average electoral margin of victory was 37.1 percent. Thats a figure youd expect from North Korea, Russia or Zimbabwe not the United States. But the shocking reality is that the typical race ended with a Democrat or a Republican winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, while their challenger won just 30 percent.

Last year, only 17 seats out of 435 races were decided by a margin of 5 percent or less. Just 33 seats in total were decided by a margin of 10 percent or less. In other words, more than 9 out of 10 House races were landslides where the campaign was a foregone conclusion before ballots were even cast. In 2016, there were no truly competitive Congressional races in 42 of the 50 states. That is not healthy for a system of government that, at its core, is defined by political competition.

Gerrymandering, in a word, is why American democracy is broken.

The word gerrymander comes from an 1812 political cartoon drawn to parody Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerrys re-drawn senate districts. The cartoon depicts one of the bizarrely shaped districts in the contorted form of a fork-tongued salamander. Since 1812, gerrymandering has been increasingly used as a tool to divide and distort the electorate. More often than not, state legislatures are tasked with drawing district maps, allowing the electoral foxes to draw and defend their henhouse districts.

While no party is innocent when it comes to gerrymandering, a Washington Post analysis in 2014 found that eight of the ten most gerrymandered districts in the United States were drawn by Republicans.

As a result, districts from the Illinois 4th to the North Carolina 12th often look like spilled inkblots rather than coherent voting blocs. They are anything but accidental. The Illinois 4th, for example, is nicknamed the Latin Earmuffs, because it connects two predominantly Latino areas by a thin line that is effectively just one road. In so doing, it packs Democrats into a contorted district, ensuring that those voters cast ballots in a safely Democratic preserve. The net result is a weakening of the power of Latino votes and more Republican districts than the electoral math should reasonably yield. Because Democrats are packed together as tightly as possible in one district, Republicans have a chance to win surrounding districts even though they are vastly outnumbered geographically.

These uncompetitive districts have a seriously corrosive effect on the integrity of democracy. If youre elected to represent a district that is 80 percent Republican or 80 percent Democratic, there is absolutely no incentive to compromise. Ever. In fact, there is a strong disincentive to collaboration, because working across the aisle almost certainly means the risk of a primary challenge from the far right or far left of the party. For the overwhelming majority of Congressional representatives, there is no real risk to losing a general election but there is a very real threat of losing a fiercely contested primary election. Over time, this causes sane people to pursue insane pandering and extreme positions. It is a key, but often overlooked, source of contemporary gridlock and endless bickering.

Moreover, gerrymandering also disempowers and distorts citizen votes which leads to decreased turnout and a sense of powerlessness. In 2010, droves of tea party activists eager to have their voices heard quickly realized that their own representative was either a solidly liberal Democrat in an overwhelmingly blue district or a solidly conservative Republican in an overwhelmingly red district. Those representatives would not listen because the electoral map meant that they didnt need to.

Those who now oppose President Trump are quickly learning the same lesson about the electoral calculations made by their representatives as they make calls or write letters to congressional representatives who seem about as likely to be swayed as granite. This helps to explain why 2014 turnout sagged to just 36.4 percent, the lowest turnout rate since World War II. Why bother showing up when the result already seems preordained?

There are two pieces of good news. First, several court rulings in state and federal courts have dealt a blow to gerrymandered districts. Several court rulings objected to districts that clearly were drawn along racial lines. Perhaps the most important is a Wisconsin case (Whitford v. Gill) that ruled that districts could not be drawn for deliberate partisan gain. The Supreme Court will rule on partisan gerrymandering in 2017, and its a case that could transform and reinvigorate American democracy at a time when a positive shock is sorely needed. (This may hold true even if Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court, as Justices Kennedy and Roberts could side with the liberal minority).

Second, fixing gerrymandering is getting easier. Given the right parameters, computer models can fairly apportion citizens into districts that are diverse, competitive and geographically sensible ensuring that minorities are not used as pawns in a national political game. These efforts can be bolstered by stripping district drawing powers from partisan legislators and putting them into the hands of citizen-led commissions that are comprised by an equal number of Democrat- and Republican-leaning voters. Partisan politics is to be exercised within the districts, not during their formation. But gerrymandering intensifies every decade regardless, because its not a politically sexy issue. Whens the last time you saw a march against skewed districting?

Even if the marches do come someday, the last stubborn barrier to getting reform right is human nature. Many people prefer to be surrounded by like-minded citizens, rather than feeling like a lonely red oasis in a sea of blue or vice versa. Rooting out gerrymandering wont make San Francisco or rural Texas districts more competitive no matter the computer model used. And, as the urban/rural divide in American politics intensifies, competitive districts will be harder and harder to draw. The more we cluster, the less we find common ground and compromise.

Ultimately, though, we must remember that what truly differentiates democracy from despotism is political competition. The longer we allow our districts to be hijacked by partisans, blue or red, the further we gravitate away from the founding ideals of our republic and the closer we inch toward the death of American democracy.

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Gerrymandering is the biggest obstacle to genuine democracy in the ... - Washington Post

Featured Although the government has promised to repeal the controversial decree legalising corruption, there are several loopholes.

Protesters use phones and flashlights during a protest in Victoriei Square, in Bucharest, Romania. Credit: Inquam Photos/Adriana Neagoe/via Reuters

Romania recently saw the largest demonstrations on its streets since the fall of communism. On February 5, more than half a million people took part in protests across the country.

The marches came in response to an emergency decree passed by the recently elected PSD-ALDE government a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE). Among other things, this aimed to weaken anti-corruption legislation and offered potential amnesty for those convicted of corruption.

The decree was issued at 10pm on the evening of Tuesday, January 31 and did not have to face parliamentary scrutiny. Many saw it as a back-door attempt by the government to help its supporters, both within the party and in the media, who are currently either in jail or under investigation for corruption.

The amnesty for those with convictions was also seen as an attempt by PSD leader Liviu Dragnea to clear his own path to becoming prime minister a position from which he is currently excluded due to a conviction for electoral fraud. Dragnea is prime minister in all but name, such is his domination of the PSD. Sorin Grindeanu, the sitting prime minister, is entirely dependent on Dragneas patronage.

The Romanian government is simultaneously strong and weak. It commands a parliamentary majority, controls many institutions and has backers in the media. But it is continually vulnerable to anti-corruption efforts, which have seen many of its prominent members and supporters jailed. Both Dragnea and ALDE leader Clin Popescu-Triceanu are subject to investigations and court cases.

The emergency decree is part of a broader PSD campaign to unpick anti-corruption safeguards through legislative initiatives which will benefit its expansive patronage networks.

People vs government?

Protesters of all ages, social backgrounds and political leanings have come from across the country in response to this situation. Many are angry at the content of the proposed law as well as the surreptitious way in which it has been introduced. This is an unprecedented mobilisation of society but also reflects how Romania has changed over the past decade. Civil society is becoming increasingly vocal and active.

Protesters hold effigies with the faces of leader of Romanias leftist Social Democrat Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea and other members of the party dressed as prisoners, during a demonstration in Bucharest. Credit: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov/File photo

The government meanwhile has shown no interest in backing down. Its public statements and actions have been conscious efforts to muddy the waters and confuse the public. Although it promised on Saturday February 4 to repeal the decree, this was more an attempt to confuse people and take them off the streets rather than a real concession. Closer inspection revealed that the repeal was not really a repeal at all. It contained clauses that had previously been declared unconstitutional so could be declared invalid at any moment meaning the initial decree would stand.

Whats more, Grindeanu suggested sending the controversial measures through parliament, which would easily approve them thanks to the PSDs majority. When his justice minister spoke out against this plan, Grindeanu threatened to sack him. Grindeanu has shifted the blame for the crisis over the decrees onto the justice ministry.

The governments supporters and media allies have been quick to attack the protesters as anti-democratic, even claiming they were being paid by US financier George Soros, fascists, or were out on the street as part of a coup dtat led by President Klaus Iohannis, who has called for a referendum on the reforms proposed in the decree and took part in the protests.

A test for Romanian democracy

The complex legal machinations and contradictory statements are part of a deliberate strategy to draw out the issue. The government seems to want to stall for as long as possible in the hope that the protesters will give up and go home.

The PSD has a lot resting on this matter. Dragneas career depends on him getting out of his own ongoing corruption case. A second conviction would see him sent to jail, perhaps ending his political career.

The PSD is also very heavily dependent on local barons and oligarchs for financial and organisational support. The price for that support is the government weakening anti-corruption legislation.

The PSD government of Victor Ponta fell in November 2015 in the face of the street protests that followed a fire in a Bucharest nightclub in which 64 people died. Although the government was of course not responsible for the fire, many Romanians felt it was responsible for the administrative culture that allowed permits to be granted in exchange for bribes with no regard for safety, and for a health service that could not cope with the aftermath of the accident.

Dragnea has positioned himself as a political hardman. He wants to face down the latest protests and show that his government and party not the people on the street are in charge. There is a fear that retreating now will embolden government opponents in the future.

Although, on the face of it, this is a simple issue of anti-corruption, it has wider implications for Romanian democracy. The government may continue its approach of legal obfuscation to try to slide its decree through or it may, for the time being, abandon this attempt to unpick anti-corruption measures. However, this will be only a short pause. For the demonstrators the question remains whether the protests can be sustained and be effective in getting the government to abandon its anti-anti-corruption strategy.

Dan Brett is an associate lecturer at The Open University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Romania Protests: What Caused the Biggest Uprising Since the Fall of Communism? - The Wire

On 5 February over half a million Romanians took to the streets of cities and towns across the country to protest against attempts by the recently elected PSD-ALDE (Social Democratic Party Alliance of Liberals and Democrats) government to weaken anti-corruption legislation.

These were the largest protests in Romania since the revolution of 1989 that overthrew the Communist regime. What is more, the demonstrations were peaceful and represent a rare moment of society coming together. In a region where governments are becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent and society more deeply polarised, why have Romanians taken to the streets to demand the resignation of a government elected a little over a month ago?

Many Central and East European states have rich traditions of popular protests to draw upon. Romania does not. Romania did not have any great protests such as the Hungarian uprising of 1956 or the Czechoslovak Prague Spring. The repressive nature of Communist rule worked against the formation of civil society; there was no Romanian counterpart to the Polish Solidarity Movement. Communism collapsed in the face of mass protests but only following extreme violence.

The violence led to the revolution being "stolen" as second-tier Communists seized control in the confusion. Romania's new government showed its intolerance of dissent in 1990 when it brought miners to Bucharest to violently attack pro-democracy demonstrators, and the fear of government instigated violence against protesters has never been far from people's minds and made many reluctant to engage with direct protests.

Rediscovering Protest

Despite the inauspicious history of protest in Romania, civil activism and protests have increasingly become a feature of politics over the last decade. Civil activism has at its heart a younger generation of Romanians. It has its roots in the environmental movement and in particular the protests against the attempt by Gabriel Resources to engage in gold mining at the historic Rosia Montana site.

READ MORE: Who is Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and why is he backing huge anti-government protests?

Although it was accepted that in an area of high unemployment economic development was welcomed, the deal between the Romanian government and the Canadian mining company was not. There would be few economic benefits for locals and the potential environmental damage was too great for many people. The government was perceived as lining its pockets through this deal at the expense of the people and the environment. With the government so heavily invested in the deal, it was pointless to look to politicians to oppose the deal. The protests and opposition have helped to delay the project thus far.

One of the criticisms of Romanian intellectuals and civil activists is their unwillingness to engage with non-intellectuals. The Rosia Montana protests represented a first step connecting different groups. Many of the early activists learnt key skills and began to develop networks during the campaigns. These came to the fore again during anti-austerity protests in 2011.

For the first two days we were moving, marching, on the third we stayed where we were, on the fourth we went home again.

Social media has been critical. In a state with often poor infrastructure, where travel between major cities can take a day or several hours to reach surrounding towns from a given city, social media has enabled groups to connect together. Social media has gone some way to breaking the domination that the PSD and its supporters had over information. Although the media is free in Romania, the primary source of information for many was through television and this was to a considerable extent controlled by groups close to the PSD.

Alongside the expansion of social media, migration has played a key role in changing the dynamics of Romanian politics. Since 2007, many Romanians of all classes have gone to work abroad, which has helped to foster a diaspora community with a strong sense of awareness of itself and politics in Romania, and this has fed back home.

Romanian civil society is not a homogenous group either politically or in its approach to activism. As a result, there is often bitter infighting between different groups, which can weaken opposition. There are differences over what issues should be the primary focus as well as how to engage in opposition. It is perhaps easier to think of Romanian activism as a large umbrella under which very many groups shelter but who often come together during moments of political crisis.

Activism and street demonstrations are not born of choice but rather of necessity. During the 2014 presidential elections, the incumbent PSD led government attempted to suppress the vote from the large Romanian diaspora. Thus the call for those at home to go and vote to prevent the government stealing the election was key to mobilising support. Activists who had cut their teeth on the Rosia Montana protests were at the forefront of organising people.

The Colectiv nightclub fire of November 2015, which killed 64, brought people back onto the street. These protests brought down the PSD government of Victor Ponta, but in its place came a new technocratic government, which to the disappointment of many maintained the same policies as the Ponta government but with less authoritarian tendencies. The sense during the Colectiv protests was that Romania was on the eve of the revolution that had been stolen from them in 1989.

However, this quickly dissipated. As one protester lamented: "For the first two days we were moving, marching, on the third we stayed where we were, on the fourth we went home again." It was this sense of disillusionment that led many voters to stay at home in the December elections which saw the PSD return to power a year after Colectiv.

The attempts by the new PSD government to weaken anti-corruption legislation have brought people back onto the street. These protests have spread across the country and have drawn all sections of society.

Protest and activism is not just limited to those who oppose the PSD and its supporters. The Coalition for the Family, an organisation opposed to same-sex marriage with support from the Orthodox Church, was able to collect over three million signatures in favour of amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Limitations

Each moment of crisis over the last decade has led to more engagement with civic activism. Despite this, there has been little substantive change in Romanian politics. The same parties and politicians are elected and they continue to govern as they did before. While the protest movements have been high in intensity and mass mobilisation, they have rarely been long lasting, and it is likely that the current government believes that it can weather the storm and within a few days the protesters will either turn on one another or grow bored and return home.

Civil society thus far is very good at opposing but very bad at formulating an alternative. Its tendency towards infighting is a reflection of its diversity, which is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness as it prevents united action. Whether this is the moment when civil society finally effects meaningful change, or whether this is another false dawn remains to be seen.

Daniel Brett is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. He studied at the University of London and has previously taught at Indiana University. His work focuses on democratisation and party politics in Eastern Europe.

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Romanians were denied a true revolution when Communism fell now is their chance for change - International Business Times UK

Democrats are desperately hoping that their self-described Resistance to President Trump can take off in the same way that opposition to President Obama launched a new political movement in 2009. As Molly Ball asks, Is the Anti-Trump Resistance the New Tea Party?

No, it isnt. Theyve been trying this ever since 2010, when some cloyingly earnest young lefties tried to start a Coffee Party that was launched with great fanfare and a lot of mainstream media publicity and never heard from again.

The Left never really tried to understand the Tea Party movement and what drove it, so they have no idea why it actually took off, and they are using vain hopes of a massive popular movement of their own to avoid confronting their real, underlying problems.

What people dont realize about the Tea Party is the extent to which it was driven by much deeper structural political forces. Specifically, it was driven by a huge mismatch in congressional districts between constituents and their representatives. There were two factors behind this.

First, in 2006, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rahm Emanuel, recruited a bunch of conservative Democrats, particularly in the South, and used them to gain 28 seats in the House and win back a majority for the Democrats. They then promptly elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House, who used these conservative Democrats as cannon fodder. They got elected in right-leaning districts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and went off to Washington DC, where they were expected to rubber-stamp an agenda designed by a far-left leadership that came out of Boston (Barney Frank) and San Francisco (Pelosi).

Something had to give, and boy did it ever. By the time the 2014 congressional elections were over, the last white Southern Democratwhich is not quite the same thing as the last conservative Democrat, but its pretty closehad been kicked out of Congress.

The second factor behind the Tea Party is that Barack Obama had such a big surge of popularity in 2008 that he not only forestalled the reckoning for Pelosis conservative Democrats but got a bunch of solidly leftist Democrats elected in marginal districts. I saw this up close in Virginias Fifth Congressional District. Its got a big left-leaning university town, Charlottesville, but also includes Jerry Falwells Liberty University down in Lynchburg and continues to a big swath of rural Southside Virginia. In that district, Tom Perrielloliterally fresh off running a George Soros-funded NGOgot elected in 2008 by a margin of 800 votes. That just wasnt going to last.

That was the context for the Tea Party movement. In a bunch of states and especially in a bunch of House districts, there was a fundamental imbalance between right-leaning constituents and left-leaning members of Congress.

The Tea Party was a big success insofar as it won two wave elections for the House GOP and kicked out a few Democratic senators. But this explains why it was less successful in the Senate: on average, the imbalance between senators and their constituents was less pronounced. Thats partly because of the staggered schedule of Senate elections, so that not every senator was swept in during the anomalous years of 2006 and 2008, and its partly because the larger and more diverse composition of states makes them less prone to wide ideological swings.

This also explains why the Tea Party fizzled out. It won enough elections to correct the basic political imbalance, and youll notice that the Trump phenomenon hasnt yet marked a change of course in that respect. The GOP representatives elected in the Tea Party wave were re-elected, and with greater margins than Trump had. If you ask what happened to the Tea Party movement in Charlottesville, for example, the answer is: Robert Hurt beat Tom Perriello in 2010 and managed not to offend the Tea Party for three terms. (He decided not to run again in 2016, and VA-5 elected another Republican.) It took a lot of the political urgency out of the movement.

My own district, by the way, is VA-7, where we kicked out Eric Cantor. Thats another part of the Tea Party story, but a much smaller one. Kicking out incumbent Republicans who werent far enough to the right for their constituents did happen, but much less often, because most incumbent Republicans were not as complacent as Cantor.

The other big political wave of the Tea Party era was in the state houses, where we can see similar forces at work. Its not just that the Democratic Partys move to the left on the federal level has been a millstone around the necks of state-level Democrats. It that congressional Democrats have actively undermined conservative Democrats in state politics, forcing them to back policies like transgender bathroom laws and persecution of Christians who wont bake the cake for a gay wedding.

In effect, the Democratic majorities of 2006 and 2008 were a false paradise, an inherently unstable arrangement just waiting for some trigger to set off a backlashand ObamaCare, a big and intrusive new government program, provided that trigger.

For the Left to mount its own equivalent of the Tea Party movement, there would have to be an equivalent political imbalance behind it.I dont see any such thing. To begin with, the Republicans who swept into Congress in the Tea Party waves of 2010 and 2014 are all still there and were recently re-elected. They werent supported by the coattails of a popular presidential candidate, because they won by much higher margins than Donald Trump did. So theres little reason to believe they are mismatched to their constituents.

There is certainly a warning here to congressional Republicans not to be the conservative Democrats of 2006 and 2008. Dont be Bart Stupak, the pro-life Democrat from Michigan who negotiated a compromise that allowed abortion funding in Obamacareand was promptly shown the door by his constituents. Congressional Republicans shouldnt allow President Trump to browbeat them into backing policies the folks back home will find unacceptable.

There may well be a public backlash against Trump this year, but for the most part, I think thats already priced in. This is a guy who won with only 46 percent of the vote and three weeks into his administration has an RealClear-Politics average approval rating of 44 percent. Hes pre-backlashed. Barack Obama, by contrast, came into office with 70 percent approval. Trumps negatives were known and very well advertised before Election Day. They are far less likely to come as a surprise to the average voter and therefore less likely to lead to a sudden reversal.

As I said, though, Democrats never really understood the Tea Party. In fact, they avoided understanding it because they preferred their own narrative to the facts. Most of them remain convinced, for example, that the Tea Party was not a real grassroots movement but was astroturfed with money from the Koch Brothers. I saw my local Tea Party on the ground level, and nothing could be further from the truth. Most of our local organizers were people who were not highly politically engaged before 2009, and there was nary a Koch dollar in sight, which is why everything was done with volunteer labor on a shoestring budget. Its the closest thing Ive ever experienced to the Norman Rockwell vision of old-fashioned town hall politics.

They are trying to build their own movement to serve a political agenda that is even more out of step with the voters they need to win back.

But if the Left still thinks the Tea Party was all just astroturfed, then theyre going to think that they can astroturf their own movement. Thats what strikes me about all this talk about The Resistance. Its still early, but so far, a lot of this seems to be coming from people who were already activists, who were already highly politically engaged. Its not spontaneous grassroots outrage. Its the revolutionary vanguard trying to herd the proletariat into following them.

More fundamentally, in trying to make the revolution happen, theyre actually taking the political imbalance that produced the Tea Party movement (and, to some extent, the Trump campaign) and theyre making it worse. They are trying to build their own movement to serve a political agenda that is even more out of step with the voters they need to win back.

A very interesting election analysis at RealClearPolitics concluded that by moving farther to the leftfarther toward the politics of Bernie Sander and Elizabeth WarrenDemocrats have managed to build up their majorities in urban and coastal enclaves, at the expense of wiping themselves out everywhere else. This hurts the Democrats chances in the Electoral College, and kills them in the House and Senate. The only way to reverse this is the way Rahm Emanuel did it: revive the conservative Democrat.

But thats the opposite of what the Resistance is trying to do, which is to make things like gay marriage and transgender bathrooms and abortion into even more intransigent litmus tests. The destruction of the conservative Democrat was not just some careless accident. For a lot of the activists on the Left, it was a deliberate goal.

Think of it this way. The most successful conservative Democrat in American politics right now is: Donald J. Trumpthe very man the Resistance was formed to resist.

Thats why there wont be a Tea Party movement for the Left. Theyre not trying to take advantage of an ideological imbalance between members of Congress and their heartland districts. Theyre trying to throw their own party even farther out of balance with the rest of the country.

Dont worry, Republicans will still have many opportunities to sabotage themselves, and they have just the man in the Oval Office to help them do it. But that damage, if or when it comes, will be self-inflicted and have little to do with the current Resistance.

Follow Robert on Twitter.

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Why The 'Resistance' Won't Be The New Tea Party - The Federalist - The Federalist