More than a million people took part in
The Feminist Marches across the country on Saturday, with roughly 500,000 marching in Washington D.C. Their short-term goal? Make their voices heard.
Mission accomplished.
It’s easy to protest, especially when there are hundreds of thousands of people joining you. Sure, some people traveled great distances to protest, and some people even did so in mostly conservative areas. But it’s much harder to protest when your views aren’t popular, when you’re in the minority, and when the press isn’t on your side.
In practical terms, the timing of the protests (spontaneously planned right after Election Day and executed the day after inauguration) made clear what their driving belief and long-term goal is: They don’t want President Trump in the White House.
Many of the protesters would probably love it if Trump left office in less than four years. But their best chance to kick Trump out is to beat him in the 2020 presidential election. That’s the hard part: finding a candidate that’s agreeable to a widespread movement of passionate people who have different political priorities.
Not only that, but find a candidate who can win in middle America, in the states the Democratic candidate will have to flip to beat Trump. That’s a tall task.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., was the only possible 2020 candidate who spoke at the march in Washington on Saturday. She might be able to snag the Democratic nomination, but with her far-Left views (she supports a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, for example), good luck flipping the Midwest.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., might be a formidable opponent for Trump, but as far as the feminist movement goes, a male candidate is probably not the ideal.
There are a few Democratic-establishment types that might be able to flip the midwest but who are unlikely to run: Michelle Obama and Joe Biden.
Some in the movement might wish Hillary Clinton would run again, but that’s not going to happen.
So Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., might be the movement’s best bet. She wasn’t in Washington on Saturday, but she did speak at a rally in Boston that day, where the march drew roughly 125,000 people. But like Harris, Warren might also be too extreme (and too coastal) to win in Middle America. Besides, she has to take care of her own re-election bid in 2018 first.
In some ways, the movement’s challenges mirror those of the Tea Party circa 2009. While the Tea Parties started to rise in late 2009, they were powerless to stop Obamacare. They made gains in the 2010 midterm elections, but could have done even more to stop President Obama’s agenda if some of their more extreme candidates hadn’t won GOP nominations. By 2012, they weren’t able to coalesce around a favored conservative candidate for president, and Mitt Romney won the party’s nomination.
It’s doubtful that the Tea Party really got what it wanted in Trump, but surely it beat the alternative.
The women’s movement might have to show a similar patience.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
