In the New York Review of Books, Judith Shulevitz rounds up some of the current research on the resistance:
The Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol [studied] counties that went for Trump in four states that went for Trump: Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Skocpol says she was startled to find so many flourishing anti-Trump groups in these conservative strongholds. She thinks the resistance is at least as extensive as the Tea Party at its height (a quarter of a million to three hundred thousand active members, according to her estimates). It is certainly as energized. Skocpol hasn’t seen a liberal movement like it in decades, she says.
….Probably the greatest misconception about the resistance is that it’s a youth movement. By an overwhelming majority, the leaders of the groups are middle-aged women—middle-aged white women, to be exact. A great many of them have never been involved in electoral politics before.
….Resistance groups usually revolve around “a pair of women who are friends,” says Skocpol. “Maybe they weren’t friends before, but they’ve become friends” since Trump’s election…. “They’re in touch all the time, they form a node that the others build around.”
Two comments. First, this is eerily similar to the origin stories of various conservative movements. They are almost always founded and organized by women who have (allegedly, anyway) been nonpolitical until something sparked their outrage. Second, all of this fits what we know about current events. For example, Trump wants to destroy Obamacare, but women are its biggest fans:
And Trump has the biggest gender gap of any modern-era president:
Trump is a serial sexual abuser who wants to destroy the kinds of social programs supported disproportionately by women. It’s no surprise that their emotional energy is considerably stronger than men’s in the resistance movement.
