What was accomplished by Saturday's rallies and marches?

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/04/what-was-accomplished-by-saturdays.html

The turnout for Saturday's "Hands Off!" rallies and marches around the country clearly exceeded the expectations of the organizers. This was a kind of testing of the waters, a check on the political temper of the United States after just 76 days of the second Trump Presidency. I've been reading the media pundit reactions, the politician reactions, the statements from organizers, and the public reaction that we are getting from the media is predictable. I'm going to ignore a lot of the predictability in evaluating the effect of what transpired.

It'll be a while before the full impact of Saturday's events will be felt. The horror of seeing crowds ten times larger than even the most optimistic predictions in deep red states like Utah, Montana, Idaho, West Virginia, and Texas has Republicans in a real panic. Even what we've seen in some of the understated and carefully guarded words, mostly pre-fab stuff, over the weekend, that is one of the more visible reactions. From that side of the aisle, I don't expect a lot of words to be said. What I expect is a change of plans that will be noticeable soon enough.

And here's an obvious fact. If a Presidential administration has motivated protests of this size and scope, in virtually every nook and cranny of this country in just 76 days in office, it is in an unmeasurable and disastrous world of trouble, and it does not have a future.

It will take a while for this to sink in. The GOP is being held together by fear of retribution, not exactly a value of American politics that has ever had much success in the past. The margins are showing up in polling data that has become even more dismal for Trump than it was in his first term. Already. Saturday's rallies affirmed the feelings that are showing up in those polls, as did the special election results last week, and so now the party that is operating out of a fear of opposition and defeat , manifesting itself in a deathly fear of holding public, town hall meetings, is scared spitless. That, more than any words of a Fox News commentator, says just how scared Republicans are about their future with Trump in the White House.

So being committed to being in for the long haul is a strategy that will work.