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Shortly afterDonald Trumps victorylast November,callsfor the left to form its own version of the Tea Party to resistthe newly elected president were almost instantaneous. Panic-stricken at the mere thought of a Trump administration, liberals and progressives found something vaguely comforting in the idea of aTea Party of the left. Although it was never quite clear how people envisaged such a thing, it is obvious why the right-wing movement came to mind. The Tea Party was, after all,largely successful in transforming American politics and paving the way for Donald Trump.

It is easy to forget that just eight years earlierthe Republican Party looked doomed as a national party. Barack Obama had been easilyelected as the first African-American president and Democrats had gained seats in both the House and Senate, giving the partycontrol of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time in nearly 15 years. In other words, theemerging Democratic majority seemedinevitable and so didthe death of theGrand Old Party.

Looking back, itcertainly seemspossible that the GOP wouldhave continued down this death spiral had it not been for the Obamabacklash that manifested itself in the Tea Party. That movement mobilized thousands if not millions of Americans (with the help ofbillionaire donors), andeventually led to theRepublicans taking back the House in 2010 and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate.But it was the GOPssuccess at state and local levelsthat had a far bigger impact on the future of American politics.

The Republican Partymade historic gains in state legislaturesthat year,winning majorities in20new legislative chambersthat had been in Democratic hands going intothe election. Itis now widely recognized, seven years after the fact, that the GOPinvested heavily in local andstateelectionsin order to seize control of the redistricting process (which happensevery decade following a census year such as 2010).

Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the nextdecade, explainedChris Jankowski, the Republican strategist behind the notorious REDMAP project. At the time, ofcourse,mostpeople especially Democrats were caughtcompletelyoff guard.The great gerrymander of 2010was unlike any gerrymandering planin history, and new redistricting softwaresturned the age-oldpracticeinto a precise science that securedthe GOPs House majority for at least a generation.

All of this made the Republican Partys revival(and the Democratic Partys collapse)possible, andit is hard to imagine that historic turnaround without theTea Party, whichusedlocal and statepolitics to overcomea clear nationaldisadvantage. It worked in spectacular fashion: Since 2010 the Democrats have lostabout 1,000 state legislative seatsin total.

It is only natural, then,for Democrats and progressives to look back atthe Tea Party for some guidance in 2017, whichis exactlywhat theauthors of the widely read Indivisibledocument didlast December, offeringa step-by-step guide for individuals, groups, and organizations looking to replicate the Tea Partys success in getting Congress to listen to a small, vocal, dedicated group of constituents. While their report highlighted theobviousimportanceof localpolitics andgrass-roots lobbying (e.g. ,town halls, sit-ins, coordinated calls, etc.), the authors also identifiedcharacteristics of the Tea Party that should be absolutelyavoided such as ignoring reality, making up ones own facts and threatening anybody who is considered an enemy.

In the six months since the Indivisible document was released, people seem to have heeded the calls for a Tea Party of the left, and popular protest has become a constant theme of the Trump era. Trumps presidency kicked offwith massiveprotests against the new president, and the day after his inauguration the Womens March attracted millions of peaceful demonstrators across the country. Protests have continued since then on the streets, attown hall meetings, on college campuses and Republicans have hadgreatdifficulty enacting their agenda (thanks in large part to the presidents unwavering incompetence). The Trump presidencyhas also prompted a huge increase in donations to nonprofit groupslike the ACLU, which received six times its annual average of donations in just one weekend after the first version of Trumps Muslim travel ban went into effect.

Of course, the resistancehas been far from perfect,and at times liberals seem to be imitating theTea Party in all the wrong ways. For example, many liberals have also come to ignore reality and create their own facts, whilefalling for conspiracy theories that bolster their increasingly paranoid worldview (particularly when it comes to Russia). Just as Tea Partiers once accused Obama of being a Kenyan-born Muslim, many liberals are today convinced that Trump is a Russian spy who is guilty of treason.

If the resistancehas been all too ready to embrace the Tea Partys paranoid style of politics, it has simultaneously been too reluctant to adoptthe anti-establishment politics that made the Tea Party such a dominant force in American politics. The Tea Party wasnt committed solely to opposing Obama and his liberalagenda, but also to challenging the Republican establishment and its crony capitalist policies as well (the bank bailouts in particular). Whilethe Tea Partys grass-rootscredibility was always in doubt, as it was largely bankrolled by billionaires and corporations,on the surface it was a populist movement, which made it appealing to those who were not just fed up with one party or one politician but with the whole of Washington.

While there are certainlysome populist and anti-establishment elements in the Trump resistance evincedbycertain progressive groups that arechallenging centrist Democrats in the primaries a kind of single-mindedness haslimited the movements scope. Liberals have become so fixated onTrump and Russia that the Democratic establishment has been able to avoid taking responsibility for the massive failure of 2016, while co-opting the grass-roots energy to serve its own purposes.

The failed campaign of centrist Democrat Jon Ossoff, who raised more than $20 million for a special election in Georgiayet lost decisively to his Republican opponent, was theclearest signyet that the resistance shouldnt just resist Donald Trump, but also the political establishment thatgot us here in the first place. Ossoff was the ideal candidate for theDNC establishment: He is young,handsome, educated, articulate and notably averseto progressive policies that are seen as too contentious,such as single-payer health care. (Ofcourse, these policies are only contentious with the donor class; they consistently garner support from the majority of Americans in polls.)

In the end, for the resistance to stop Trump and resurrectthe Democratic Party if that is indeed the goal it will have to transform American politics as the Tea Party did before it. This is no easy task, and while the Tea Party helped raisethe GOP from the dead, it also created the partys very own Frankenstein monsterin the process the orange-hued monsteris now the public face of the party.

If the left plunges further into conspiracy theories and magical thinking, while avoiding larger questions about how to transform America and tackle major problemslikeinequality andpolitical corruption, it mayend up creatingits own partisan monster while hastening the decline of our democracy. If, on the other hand, thegrass-roots energy that has beeninspired by Trumps election can be harnessed to create a sustainedpopular movement, then the Trump resistance could have an even greater impact on American politics than the Tea Party ever did.

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The Trump resistance vs. the Tea Party: So far, a story of immense potential and great danger - Salon