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Angry Facebook posts. People wielding signs in the city square indicating their displeasure with the president. Voters show up at town hall meetings with their members of Congress demanding to know what will happen to their health insurance and to say, "Hands off my Medicare!"

Everything that is old becomes new again. Liberals once rolled their eyes at these things when they were associated with the Tea Party Right. Now there is a Tea Party brewing on the Left.

In fact, the Washington Examiner reported on a progressive campaign to "resist" President Trump's agenda that is explicitly based on the lessons of the Tea Party.

The powdered wigs have been repealed and replaced with pink knit hats. Quotes from the Founding Fathers are still displayed on signs, but not as often as mentions to the part of the female anatomy the new president referenced in his notorious chat with Billy Bush.

That vulgar "Access Hollywood" tape has played a bigger role in radicalizing opposition to Trump than the Jeremiah Wright sermons and the "bitter clingers" tape combined did in hardening attitudes against President Obama.

FEMA camps. Muslim registries. Gun-grabbing and pussy-grabbing. The memes were dark.

Anti-Obama conservatives felt Obama was rejecting the country's founding principles and transforming it into something it was never meant to be. Anti-Trump liberals believe Trump also rejects core American political values and is reviving the racism they were once convinced would die with their Tea Party forebears.

In both cases, you saw people who were previously apolitical suddenly actively sharing political content hostile to the sitting president on social media and people who were mildly political becoming committed activists.

You also saw the occasional person who had spent their whole adult lives on the opposite side of the political divide suddenly deciding the current president was the last straw for them.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"Turns out you're just like all the rest selfish and spineless."

01/26/17 11:13 PM

Conservative and progressive groups that had long predated either the Tea Party or the self-styled anti-Trump resistance quickly sprang into action to organize and to capitalize. The antiwar and civil libertarian progressive groups that have been moribund since George W. Bush left town will be resurrected.

Liberals are even rediscovering the virtues of state and local governments standing up to Washington, the need to limit executive power, adhering to the Constitution and longstanding political norms.

The president isn't always going to be a person who shares your values or even necessarily a particularly nice person. Therefore, you might want to avoid giving him a massive surveillance apparatus or allowing him to compile a secret, extrajudicial kill list. It might be good to make him or her go to Congress before sending the country to war.

One imagines most liberals regret diluting the filibuster the point that executive branch appointees and most federal judges can be approved by the Senate by simple majority rule. With 48 seats, under the old rules the Democrats could have blocked any Trump Cabinet pick they wanted. Now they may not be able to block any.

Another similarity with the Tea Party: We could see liberals turn against Democrats who don't share their anger with Trump and the system, much as conservatives rejected Republicans who weren't sufficiently outraged by Obama.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers?"

01/26/17 10:44 PM

This hasn't taken the form of many primary challenges yet. But it was a factor in Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary Clinton last year. It's part of what's driving Keith Ellison's bid for Democratic National Committee chair right now.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has so far voted for every Trump Cabinet pick the Senate has confirmed. That can't stand for long.

Progressives no longer believe it is inherently bad to want to see a president fail or be limited to just one term. Trump is saying he wants to do many of the same things Obama promised: bring back jobs, stimulate the economy and help fix healthcare.

If you don't think a president's policies will achieve those goals at least not at a cost future generations can endure it's hardly unpatriotic to oppose the president.

Then again, we've seen this movie before. On questions of executive power, foreign policy and civil liberties, there is very little partisan consistency. With the exception of a few bold backbenchers, we see the two parties trade places on these issues every four to eight years.

A difference this time is that there is a subset of conservatives who oppose Trump with whom the resistance could make common cause or who could be pushed into Trump's arms by unchecked left-wing hysteria. Not a huge subset, but more numerous than anti-Bush conservatives and certainly anti-Obama liberals.

That's another bit of continuity: dating back to at least Bill Clinton, a substantial portion of the country has spent much of its free time trying to convince the rest of the population that the president is the devil.

No matter how sincerely these views were held, they often did more to convince people that the opposition was unhinged. It became too hard for the voters who didn't already share their passion to separate the legitimate criticisms from what was unfair or over the top.

Fortunately for those outraged by Trump, detractors of Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama all managed to take control of Congress at these presidents' low points. But all three of those presidents got to serve two full terms.

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Liberal anger at Trump is starting to resemble the Tea Party - Washington Examiner (blog)